The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
