The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this 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 follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
