The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors 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 victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
