The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" 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 social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
