Feminine rage takes center stage in the conclusion of Seattle mystery 'Elita'

The KUOW Book Club just finished reading Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's novel "Elita." I'm your reading guide Katie Campbell, Lunstrum joined me at the KUOW studios recently to talk about her debut novel. Listen to our full conversation by hitting the play button above.

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ernadette Baston, the main character of "Elita," has a delightfully precocious young daughter who, in addition to serving as occasional comic relief, delivers some of the book's best lines.

The little girl, Wilhelmina, or Willie as she prefers to be called, makes this observation that becomes a sort of theme in the book:

Considering Bernadette and Willie are talking about Mount Rainier — first called Tahoma, or "mother of waters," by the Puyallup Tribe — I like to think Willie would agree with me that a mother, any woman really, can also be a volcano, dormant or otherwise.

"I was writing this in 2020, during the first Trump presidency," Sundberg Lunstrum told me. "We were talking a lot about reproductive rights and the rollback of reproductive rights. We were talking a lot about the ways in which women are held to different standards in the public eye than men are held to. And there was an encroaching, which now feels almost suffocating, sense that history was recoiling on itself, and we were going to experience much more entrenched gender expectations, gender norms, and conventions that would feel sort of corseting."

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As a mother herself and a teacher, she said "Elita" was a place to explore the friction that exists between the self and community.

"How much freedom do you give up in order to be acceptable and to gain the benefits of a society?" she said.

Naturally, Sundberg Lunstrum's inner struggle became Bernadette's.

"I was raised by two feminist parents, so I feel like I was given other lessons about the self. Yet, even still, there has been a tension around expectations for me as a woman, as a mother, as a wife," Sundberg Lunstrum said. "I so often resist those tensions even while enacting exactly what is asked of me. I think the professional versus domestic struggle Bernadette goes through is the one that's sort of most keen in my life. And as a mother who also is a writer, I am always divided as a self."

In "Elita," Bernadette is a deeply dedicated mother, and I will happily argue with anyone who says otherwise. She's also an ambitious academic who wants to stay on Atalanta's case.

Recall, Atalanta has been found alone on the titular prison island Elita and cannot or will not speak. Bernadette, a child development scholar, is supposed to get her talking, but she's ultimately drawn into the mystery of where Atalanta came from, who is responsible for leaving her alone in the woods, and how long she's been out there.

The answer was stunning, mostly because Sundberg Lunstrum tricked us into underestimating a woman even as she stoked the flames of feminine rage. Bernadette is so aware of the chauvinism working against her, yet she falls into its trap and takes the reader with her.

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I asked Sundberg Lunstrum about that apparent trickery.

"I think my writing process is much less intentional," she said with a laugh. "I did not know the book's ending until I was probably 80% done with the draft. I was, in fact, getting kind of desperate because I didn't know the answers."

So, she asked readers of the early drafts what they thought, and she realized she'd laid the seeds for the final twist all along.

"The book gives Bernadette many parallel characters," she said. "There are times when she is looking at herself in another person and seeing something in them that she has not been able to recognize about herself. And there's revelation and sort of self-enlightenment. And then, there are other times when she's paired with another woman whose experience or worldview or perspective is so radically different than her own that she is looking through that person to a world that she didn't recognize was there. I think the underestimation comes from exactly that experience, that she at times, as we all do, assumes or overlays her own experience on others, and it's a mistake."

This is a spoiler-free zone, so if you want to know what mistake Bernadette makes, you'll just have to read the book.

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Bernadette has another parallel in the story, too, one who is not a woman: Detective Norquist. He was a unique foil for Bernadette, at times seeming to question her authority in the case and at others openly admitting to needing her perspective. As a reader, I was unsure about Norquist for a while — and vehemently against any romantic relationship between him and Bernadette when it briefly seemed the story might go in that direction. But I finally decided he was a good if imperfect man when he had this exchange with Bernadette on page 220:

"They think I'm crazy, you know," [Bernadette said to Norquist.]

"Well, the screaming didn't help your case."

She smiles. "I don't know where that came from."

"Sure you do. Once, when my ex-wife was not yet my ex-wife, I punched my fist through the wall of our bedroom. Tore out the plaster, busted a knuckle. And then the hole was just there for me to look at. I didn't know how to patch it. I'm not very handy." He grins.

To be clear, I'm not charmed by his admission that he got violent — nor did Sundberg Lunstrum want readers to be charmed. The important thing about this exchange is his recognition that he lost control, and that he's able to sympathize when Bernadette does, too.

Sundberg Lunstrum said the book is asking whether it's possible to hold onto what is wild and sacred about yourself and still exist within a social structure. Sometimes, her characters fit into that structure, for example, by being an attentive mother who walks her child and husband to school each day. Other times, they deliberately stray, like when Atalanta soils herself when she feels threatened.

"Society demands certain things of us, and both characters, in the end, needed to navigate those expectations in order for the story's ending to feel true to the world we live in," Sundberg Lunstrum said. "I do feel like Bernadette is sort of picking up the pieces she has to hold and carrying on, and she leaves the book, as does Atalanta, with a lot of dignity."

For Atalanta, dignity comes in her "assertion of independence," which may or may not be what readers hope for. And for Bernadette, it is the seizure of her freedom, society be damned.

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Plot twist: I've changed m mind about our November pick! I had been leaning toward "The Curve of Time" by M. Wylie Blanchet. But I couldn't shake this kind of meh feeling about it, and I always trust my reading gut. We'll read that classic eventually, but I'm craving something quite different for next month.

That said, I have selected — for sure this time — "No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters" by Ursula K. Le Guin. This is not one of her incredible works of science fiction. It's actually a collection of the best pieces from her blog, "No Time to Spare," which she took up writing late in her life. Her blog was where Le Guin meditated on aging, the state of literature, and even breakfast. It has a little something for everyone from one of the best writers to have ever lived in this region.

I happened upon a used copy of the book recently, which feels like kismet, so I'm leaning into it. Please, forgive me for making a change at the eleventh hour. I think Le Guin's work will more than make up for it.