The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "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 continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around 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.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
