The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point 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 Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par