The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, 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.
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
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