The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations 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 troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
