The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
