The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
