The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "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 wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
