The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess 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 nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. 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 emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
