The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance 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 persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when 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 with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
