The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
