The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes 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 fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses 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
