The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned 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 tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
