The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought 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 extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
