The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by 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 makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
