The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
