The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character 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. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
