The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes 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 destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
