The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband 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 Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
