The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
