The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
