Bright Young Women (2023) By Jessica Knoll

I will give a spoiler warning at the top of this review, due to the quotes featured, so please skip past the quotes if you wish to avoid them.

"Right here, right now, I want you to forget two things: he was nothing special, and what happened was not random."

I began reading this book with very little knowledge of its story, nor its author. I was drawn to it by two things; the intriguing cover/blurb and the reaction of some of my peers in the reading community. As I read it, the revelations of what story was unfolding kept me both intensely engrossed and unshakeably engaged.

"Women got that feeling about him, that funny one we all get when we know something isn't right, but we don't know how to politely extricate ourselves from the situation without escalating the threat of violence or harassment. That is not a skill women are taught, the same way men are not taught that it is okay to leave a woman alone if what she wants is to be left alone."

I liked the way the protagonists' spoke to the reader - everything felt personal, intimate even. Both of the characters with whom we are lead through the story are wonderfully written and satisfyingly unique. I also liked some of the little bits of personal and historical context they gave, allowing the story to feel more placed in both reality and the narrative.

"There were men who cracked their knuckles while divulging to me what they would do to the defendant if they got the chance, thinking this was somehow reassuring for me to hear. But all it did was make me realize that there wasn't so big a difference between the man who brutalized Denise and half the men I passed every day on the street."

The book speaks poignantly of the often unspoken divide between the outdated institutions of men and women, as it pertains to how they are raised, how they are taught to think, and how they are treated based on gender and physical appearance.

"Things grow differently when they’re damaged, showing us how to occupy strange new ground to bloom red instead of green. We can be found, brighter than before."

Not only this, but the story succinctly and successfully tackles queer lives in a time before it was relatively normalised I society, as well as the early, innocent forays into one's exploration of their sexuality and identity. It was refreshing to read such a well-formed and not too overbearing perspective.

"Time does not heal all wounds. Grief is just like a sink full of dirty dishes or a pile of soiled laundry. Grief is a chore you have to do and it's a messy one at that."

I was very impressed with the presentation of the emotional strain suffered during many of these types of criminal cases; of witnesses, of victim's loved ones, especially those who try to find closure and justice for their wronged loved ones. I thought Knoll fantastically displayed the frustration, the desperation, the resilience, the determination, the anger, the grief, the incredulity - everything one might feel going through such frustrating legal proceedings.

"...anger in women is treated as a character disorder, as a problem to be solved, when oftentimes it is entirely appropriate, given the circumstances that trigger it."

The sledgehammer to the gut that the final chapters provide, hand-in-hand with the equally impactful resolution of them, is as brilliant and powerful as it is heartwrenchingly and unequivocally bitter-sweet. The fact that the story is derived from real history - real stories and experiences - made this all the more emotional to read.

"I have faith, because nature is the very best example of integration. Things grow differently when they’re damaged, showing us how to occupy strange new ground to bloom red instead of green. We can be found, brighter than before."

My heart was, and is, aching for the lives wrenched from their place in the world, and for those whose loss changed their world irreversibly and painfully into a new shape, for which there would be no going back. I love this book, despite, as well as because of, the heartache it caused.

"I've tried to make sense of how someone who didn't stalk his victims in advance ended up going after the best and the brightest. And I think that's it, the thing they all had in common - a light that outshone his. He targets college campuses and sorority houses because he's looking for the cream of the crop. He wants to extinguish us - we are the ones who remind him that he's not that smart, not that good-looking, and there's nothing particularly special about him."

The book is a brilliant example of discussing true crime without glorifying the perpetrators. It humanised and endeared the victims in a way media fails time and time again to do. It gives the women in the story agency, autonomy and personality that documentaries and dramatised film and television almost never take the time to do.

"They will call you hysterical no matter how much dignity you have. So you might as well do whatever the hell you want."

It's a feminist masterpiece, which effectively and expertly cuts down to size one of America's most overly-depicted and saturated monsters. Jessica Knoll's thriller is a truly brilliant piece if writing, and is one that will hopefully be recognised as a modern classic.

"Law enforcement would rather we remember a dull man as brilliant than take a good hard look at the role they played in this absolute sideshow, and I am sick to death of watching them in their pressed shirts and cowboy boots, in their comfortable leather interview chairs, in hugely successful and critically acclaimed crime documentaries, talking about the intelligence and charm and wiliness of an ordinary misogynist. This story is not that. The story is not that."