The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" 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 seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning 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 narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
