The Four Spent the Day Together

Because there are at least three sections and separate stories in this book, albeit loosely connected, it seemed disjointed and hard to follow. The first story is about the main character’s parents settling in Connecticut. Catt’s mother feels displaced, particularly when her younger child proves to be slow in development. The shift to Catt as a grown woman seems abrupt to the story and difficult to follow. In the interim, Catt had married a distinguished man and become rich, but she discards him and falls for a much younger man. Her new husband, Paul, proves difficult because he is an addict, so the story shifts to life with an addict and the ups and downs therein. Abruptly, the story shifts to a murder in the Iron Range of Minnesota, where Catt and Paul have their summer home. This reader was perplexed by the jumble of rather disconnected stories and the ups and downs of Catt’s relationships. If there was a relationship between these stories and characters, I did not discover it.