The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim 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 troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
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 clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
