The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit 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 alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
