My Dark Vanessa

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The first thing I said when I finished this was WOW.

In an age where there has been a reckoning for all kinds of terrible behavior by men, it’s easy to see the issue in the black and white/us vs them binary that serves as “discussion” both online and in person. It’s difficult to face all the terrible things that men are capable of and not feel shame as a man---though many find it very easy to feel no shame at all. But it is ever harder to see a gray area, if there is indeed a gray area when it comes to sexual assault.

It starts off innocently enough…that’s what we’d like to think…At a private school in Maine fifteen-year-old Vanessa and forty-two year old teacher Jacob Strane share a moment…it all starts when he brushes her knee. But soon it leads to much more. Soon the little visits after class become a scandal, whispered about in the hallways lead to potential fallout for everyone involved.

Cut to the adult Vanessa laying out what she believes was a consensual affair between two people. And indeed, contact with Strane continues well into her adulthood. The reality is that Vanessa’s abuse at the hands of a man who would turn out to be a serial abuser of young girls is both as obvious to others as it is subtle to her. And My Dark Vanessa is a brutal psychological profile that does not shy from the complications of agency and age of consent. Vanessa never believes she is a victim. But was she too young to realize it? Was she actually in love with Strane? Was he in love with her? At one point she muses that she has given over a third of her life to this man. At what point was this abuse? It is not an easy question. (for what it’s worth, it’s pretty cut and dry: Strane was an adult and Vanessa was a child. I am not at all advocating anything else.)

In a story that alternates between 2001 and 2017, the story of one man’s manipulation of a younger student is told. The effect of this manipulation extends well into Vanessa’s adulthood, and ultimately is on the fringes of the 2018 “Me Too” Movement. But it is much more complicated than that. And My Dark Vanessa does a great job of exploring all the angles of this abusive relationship, while also noting the harm that is inherent in forcing people to do anything, including speaking out and reliving trauma.
According to the acknowledgments page, Russell spent 18 years on this book. And the result is an amazing book. I marveled how well organized and plotted it was; how things mentioned in the “present” were later brought up in the “past.” Seeds were planted that grew later. And the scene where two of the victims compare notes in the coffee shop had to be the best part of the book: just when you think one thing is going to happen, it splits off into something else.

This was excellent, a thriller of a sort. Lolita is referenced quite a bit. I hope I've given this a decent review, the topic is out of my comfort zone.




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