Book Review: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
“I’m going to ruin you.”
Title: My Dark Vanessa
Author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
Series? N/A
My Rating: ★★★★
Genre(s): Fiction, Contemporary
Age Range: Adult
Publication: 10 March 2020 (William Morrow)
CW: sexual abuse, pedophilia, mentions of suicide
My Dark Vanessa is by far the most discomforting book I’ve ever read.
Discomfort is to be expected when choosing to read a book about a 15-year-old girl who is groomed and abused by her schoolteacher. Normally, this isn’t the sort of book that I would choose to read. However, with the recent developments in the #MeToo movement, this felt like the sort of story that slipped through the cracks. And that’s what it was. At least to me.
Bright and solitary Vanessa Wye begs her parents to allow her to attend a prestigious Maine boarding school. There, she meets Jacob Strane, her 42-year-old English teacher. As Strane sets his sights on young Vanessa, she unknowingly enters what becomes a decades-long struggle as she is manipulated to believe that she is in a consensual relationship with Strane.
Vanessa Wye is 15 years old. Still a child.
Vanessa is the sort of teenager who yearns for adulthood, desparate to be taken seriously. Who wasn’t that way as a teenager? Unfortunately, Strane sets his sights on Vanessa and she believes that he sees her for her maturity in comparison to her peers. She falls for his manipulation, his mind-twisting games, and his continuous emotional and sexual abuse. To say that it’s difficult to read Vanessa engaging with a predator, all the while believing she’s loved and cared for by Strane, is an understatement.
The moral of the story, in my opinion, is that the system continuously and egregiously fails Vanessa. Everyone around Vanessa fails her. Teachers who suspect Strane of immoral conduct with his student turn a blind eye. Students ostracize and vilify Vanessa, rather than recognize the situation for what it is. Vanessa is a victim, not a participant in her abuse.
In our society, girls like Vanessa are seldom perceived as a victim; they are “troubled”, “willing”, and even, somehow, ridiculously, “promiscuous”. She’s a slut. She’s a student sleeping with her teacher in exchange for good grades.
In reality, Vanessa is a child being sexually and emotionally exploited by a grown man. Even her own mother neglects to adequately support and protect Vanessa. She blames her daughter for being wrapped up in this so-called “relationship”, as though Vanessa has any control over the situation.
While the subject matter is inherently distressing, the content could sometimes be gratuitous.
The novel explores themes and scenarios that often made me feel deeply uncomfortable, distressed, and even physically ill. While I appreciate this was necessary to drive home the point, it could also be a bit too graphic at times.
I understand the need for shock-value with the explicit scenes — it is intended to unsettle readers — but it was still a bit too much for me. I think that many people, in particular those who are victims of abuse themselves, would be extremely disturbed and even triggered by the content in this book.
Overall, My Dark Vanessa was a very well-written and thought-provoking novel. Kate Elizabeth Russell penned a story that is timely in the midst of the #MeToo Movement and I believe this book will serve as an excellent conversation starter — particularly for the conversations so often avoided by society.
It’s important that we learn not to draw distinct parameters of what is deemed “abuse” — thus marginalizing women who don’t understand their own abuse, like Vanessa.
Synopsis: 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?
Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.
Have you read My Dark Vanessa? What did you think? Let’s discuss in the comments.
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