The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says 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 Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
