The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
