The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
