The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks 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 not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
