The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
