The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired 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.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
