The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
