The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
