Bright Young Women

Content Warning: This novel and review contain references to death, gender-based discrimination, graphic violence, and sexual violence.

In Bright Young Women, Jessica Knoll draws inspiration from serial killer Ted Bundy and the crimes he committed over a multi-year period in the 1970s. Bundy has been an object of cultural fascination (especially as true crime has risen as a popular genre), and many accounts depict him as a charismatic and handsome man who lured women because they found him appealing. Bright Young Women challenges this narrative about Bundy, insisting on the mediocrity and arrogance of a fictional killer who is relegated to the title of “the Defendant.” Simultaneously, the novel explores the tragedy of intelligent and ambitious women having their lives cut short—either literally, through violence, or metaphorically, as they feel compelled to stifle their strength to appease male egos.

The novel alternates between multiple points of view and timelines, gradually revealing the experiences of two women victimized by a serial killer known only as The Defendant. Pamela is a college student and the president of a sorority when The Defendant violently attacks multiple young women who live there, resulting in the deaths of two of them (including Pamela’s close friend). Years earlier, The Defendant abducted and killed a young woman named Ruth in Seattle, and Ruth’s partner, Tina, has been trying to secure justice ever since. Tina and Pamela begin working together to compile evidence that the crimes (as well as additional murders that they uncover) were committed by the same man. They face challenges from police and a legal system that is biased, incompetent, and rendered impotent by bureaucracy. However, the two women are finally able to provide enough evidence that The Defendant is arrested, charged with the sorority house murders, found guilty, and eventually executed.

Alongside the main plotline that unfurls after the attacks at the sorority house, a plotline set in the past and told from Ruth’s point of view captures her experiences in the months leading up to her death, during which she achieves greater autonomy and falls in love with Tina. A third plotline, set in the 2020s, depicts Pamela as a successful lawyer who is tipped off to newly uncovered information about The Defendant and his crimes. This information confirms that he did in fact murder Ruth (a crime he was never charged with), allowing Pamela and Tina to finally find closure. 

Revolving around a series of violent attacks targeting women, Bright Young Women is a challenging read. There are some frightening scenes and depictions of graphic violence, although the narrative makes a point to preserve the dignity of the murdered women by avoiding gratuitous detail. Still, this does not fully temper the book’s subject matter, nor it is intended to: The lead-up to the attack at the sorority house and the immediate aftermath (which the college, the local police, and law enforcement agencies alike mishandle) are actually more chilling for their depiction of casual misogyny, victim blaming, and overall lack of care for survivors of violence. In Chapter 13, a sheriff assigned to the case warns Pamela against any sort of collaboration with Tina in a tone as ominous and threatening as anything a reader would expect of the actual killer: “I’d advise you not to spend time alone with the woman, Pamela. I’d advise you not to spend any time with her at all, for your own safety” (96). This relocation of the story’s horror—away from the killer and toward the culture that abets him—is key to the novel’s subversion of the true crime genre, and it handles the shift deftly.

Equally important to Knoll’s critique is her development of the principal female characters. Pamela is a compelling protagonist who struggles to care for others and maintain control in a situation completely outside of what she should be grappling with as a young college student. While the alliance between Pamela and Tina is powerful partly because it allows them to share knowledge and work together to bring the killer to justice, just as important is how it shapes Pamela’s character development at a formative juncture in her life. Over the course of the novel, she transitions from a perfectionist and a people-pleaser to someone who is much more assertive and willing to insist on making her voice heard; indeed, the novel directly attributes Pamela’s subsequent career as a successful lawyer and her marriage to a man who truly respects and values her to the confidence she develops in the wake of a traumatic event. Besides demonstrating the novel’s commitment to humanizing the women affected by The Defendant’s crimes rather than The Defendant himself, this arc provides a necessary contrast to (and respite from) the tragic fates of the women who die young, their potential cut unrealized.

By contrast, Ruth’s plotline is especially bleak because it is clear from the outset that she is going to die. Ruth’s character development parallels that of Pamela in that she gradually becomes more autonomous and assertive, accepting her orientation and pursuing a loving partnership with Tina. This character arc heightens the tragedy of her death: The Defendant takes Ruth’s life and future away from her just as she is on the cusp of achieving lasting happiness and freedom. The choice to devote significant time to developing a doomed character will fall flat with some readers, but it reflects Knoll’s overall project: to call out the tendency to give serial killers (and other perpetrators of violence) the attention they crave rather than focusing on the ambitions and attributes of those they victimize.

That said, Bright Young Women is a novel rather than a work of nonfiction. The stories—and, indeed, many of the names—of the women Bundy killed are fictionalized, which raises an important question: Do such alterations to the historical record themselves contribute to the erasure of these women? It’s not a simple question to answer, as one could easily make the case that using the women’s names would merely reassociate them with their violent deaths, flattening them to the status of “victim” in a way Knoll clearly wishes to avoid. The tension speaks more to the limitations of the thriller genre than to Knoll as a writer, but it does make one wonder whether a more thoroughly fictional narrative could have conveyed Knoll’s critique without the ethical baggage—a single, oblique nod to Bundy in the title reminding readers that such things do in fact happen in real life.