The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
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