The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
