The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim 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 troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
