The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse 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 short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued 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 personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
