The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
