The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position 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 presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
