The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child 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 answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
