{"id":1807,"date":"2024-12-17T13:54:42","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T21:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/?p=1807"},"modified":"2024-12-17T13:56:40","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T21:56:40","slug":"elita-an-engrossing-first-novel-brings-nordic-noir-to-the-pacific-northwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/?p=1807","title":{"rendered":"ELITA: An Engrossing First Novel Brings Nordic Noir to the Pacific Northwest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Where the light hits it, the water blanches waxy and pale gray, but in the shadow of the boat it is deep jade green in shallow spots and midnight blue in deeper ones. The breeze kicks up the clean, briny smell of it, and Bernadette finds herself breathing full breaths, something in her head already unkinking out here away from the city. <\/em>(p. 44)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~ ~ ~ ~ ~<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum<\/a>\u2019<\/strong>s engrossing and beautifully written new novel, Elita<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, opens in 1951 with the frightening discovery of a seemingly wild girl on the rugged outskirts of a prison island in Puget Sound. But Lunstrum doesn\u2019t deliver the tense scene\u2014in which the girl bares her teeth and fights to keep two prison workers from tying her up\u2014in the you-are-there<\/em> way most authors might.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, she puts us in a dark library room where her main character, Bernadette Baston, a university lecturer in child psychology, is listening to a tape of the workers describing what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lunstrum\u2019s approach tells us immediately that this is a story of mystery more than certainty, perception more than truth, contemplation more than action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a specialty in language acquisition, Bernadette has been hired to teach the seemingly mute child to speak, but she is more interested in furthering her own research by merely observing the girl’s development. This puts her at odds with the child welfare case manager who hired her, Nora Reach, who has her own agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As others weigh in with self-serving ideas on what should be done with the girl\u2014the warden at the prison where she\u2019s being kept, the prison\u2019s doctor, the police detective assigned to the case\u2014we begin to wonder if anyone really cares about the child herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever her feelings or motives, Bernadette begins to search for the truth about the girl\u2019s origins. Her probing leads her to a nearby island inhabited by an insular Scandinavian immigrant community whose furtive ways suggest a larger, darker story than Bernadette is prepared for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Atalanta. Marble, 1703-1705. Copy of Ma 52, a Roman copy after a Hellenistic original, in the Louvre (image from Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But the mystery of the wild child\u2014dubbed Atalanta after a girl in Greek mythology \u201cleft by her father to die in the woods because she was not born a son\u201d\u2014is only one of two main stories Lunstrum has to tell. The other is about Bernadette herself, whose life is tenuous in every way. Not only is her connection to the Atalanta case based on a misconception, but her position at the state university in Seattle is temporary rather than permanent, and her vision of herself as the sole loving parent for her four-year-old daughter, Willie, becomes threatened when her absent husband suddenly returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What develops is an intertwined exploration of the place and agency of girls and women in the male-dominated post-war world\u2014and, by extension, our world today. Every direction Bernadette turns, she faces barriers caused by an assumption of male privilege and a perception of women as weaker in every way, including emotionally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lunstrum seems particularly interested in the ways motherhood defines and shapes a woman\u2019s outlook and interactions, not only with children but also with the patriarchal matrix someone like Bernadette is forced to navigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Late in the book, Lunstrum writes about Bernadette: \u201cShe\u2019s always liked the idea that language is the house in which one dwells, and the windows of that house are the glass through which one sees the outside world. Now she sees that motherhood, too, is a kind of language.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with the stories it tells, Elita<\/em> investigates the efficacy of language, the supposed verities of identity formation, and the impacts of living in a remote region like the Northwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photo by Nick Bolton<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The novel\u2019s jacket copy describes Elita<\/em> as \u201cNordic Noir, imported to the moody shores of the Pacific Northwest and the eerie social landscape of 1950s America.\u201d According to Wikipedia<\/em>, \u201cNordic noir\u2026is typically set in bleak landscapes. This results in a dark and morally complex mood, in which a tension is depicted between the apparently still and bland social surface and the patterns of murder, misogyny, rape, and racism the genre depicts as lying underneath.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Elita<\/em> doesn\u2019t descend as far into that underbelly as other books in the genre (such as Stieg Larsson\u2019s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo<\/a><\/em>), it definitely explores the stultifying and sometimes dangerous experiences of capable women living in the shadows of entitled men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~ ~ ~ ~ ~<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum<\/a><\/strong> is the author of three short story collections, one of which, <\/em>What We Do with the Wreckage<\/a>, won the 2017 Flannery O\u2019Connor Award for Short Fiction. <\/em>Elita<\/strong> is her first novel. She lives with her family near Seattle.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elita<\/a><\/em><\/strong> will be published on January 15, 2025<\/strong>, by Northwestern University Press\/Triquarterly Books and launched with an author event at The Edmonds Bookshop at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 16<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To pre-order a copy of Elita<\/em><\/strong>, click here<\/a>. For more about the book, the author, and Lunstrum\u2019s appearance schedule, go to kirstensundberglunstrum.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: I\u2019m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local bookstores. If you buy a book through a click on this website, I\u2019ll earn a small commission that helps defray the costs of maintaining<\/em> WritingtheNorthwest.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum\u2019s engrossing and beautifully written new novel, Elita, opens in 1951 with the discovery of a seemingly wild girl on the rugged outskirts of a prison island in Puget Sound. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_swt_meta_header_display":false,"_swt_meta_footer_display":false,"_swt_meta_site_title_display":false,"_swt_meta_sticky_header":false,"_swt_meta_transparent_header":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[98,103],"tags":[449,505,425,507,506,207,508],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews-news","category-nw-people","tag-kirsten-sundberg-lunstrum","tag-new-northwest-books","tag-northwest-writers","tag-northwestern-university-press","tag-pacific-northwest-fiction","tag-puget-sound","tag-triquarterly-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-scaled.jpg","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-scaled.jpg",1743,2560,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-204x300.jpg",204,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-768x1128.jpg",768,1128,true],"large":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-697x1024.jpg",697,1024,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-1046x1536.jpg",1046,1536,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-1395x2048.jpg",1395,2048,true],"mailpoet_newsletter_max":["https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/KSLAuthorPhoto1-2024-1320x1938.jpg",1320,1938,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"michael n. mcgregor","author_link":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum\u2019s engrossing and beautifully written new novel, Elita, opens in 1951 with the discovery of a seemingly wild girl on the rugged outskirts of a prison island in Puget Sound.","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1824,"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions\/1824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingthenorthwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}