The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes 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 marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
