The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states 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 several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
