The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, 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 seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
