The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet 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 with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
