The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". 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 bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
