The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations 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 difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
