The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
