The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
