The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into 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 own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness 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 become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
