The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
