The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help 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 is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
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 pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile 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.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
