The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
