The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
