The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative 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 new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
