The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". 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 destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated 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 individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
