The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
