The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
