The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
