The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering 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 text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
