The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering 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 repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
