The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells 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 different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
