The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
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 pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
