The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
