The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. 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 the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
