The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
