Book Review
Title: My Dark Vanessa
Author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: *****
Review: My Dark Vanessa has been on my radar since it was announced, and it has finally made it onto my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge where I am going to read some of the best books of 2020, and this was in the Best Fiction Category. All I knew about this novel was it was pitched to me as a modern day Lolita and it follow Vanessa Wye who had an inappropriate relationship with her teacher Jacob Strane at only 15 years old. I do have to mention that the novel timeframe takes place between 2000 and 2017 and does bounce around a lot but it is told solely from Vanessa’s point of view which makes it pretty simple to follow. The opening to My Dark Vanessa was amazing, we are introduced to Vanessa who is now 32, as her former lover, Jacob Strane is being re-investigated for an allegation of the abuse of a female student, Taylor Birch ten year before. It was interesting to see that Strane and Vanessa still stay in regular contact and regularly revisiting memories of their relationship in which Vanessa still find sexual release. We can see from the beginning that Vanessa isn’t satisfied with her life, but she is determined to not believe the girl accused Strane and seeks reassurance and comfort in him when she finds it hard to deal with life like she did when her father died. When Strane and Vanessa met for the first time she was 15 and his was 42 which means in 2017 she is 32 and he is 59.
We then jump back to 2000 when Vanessa is only 15, in this period we learn that Vanessa attends a private school called Browick where Strane teaches American Lit, one of the hardest classes. We also see during this time that Vanessa struggles with anxiety and depression and that she doesn’t have a lot of friends since her only friend from the previous year Jenny abandoned her in favour of her boyfriend, Tom. After being advised to join some extracurricular activities she decides on the literature club which publishes the school journal and is run by Mr. Strane and only has one other member, Jesse, who Vanessa does get along well with. However, during her time in the club she begins to notice her own reactions to Mr. Strane but he makes her feel like she is being seen, like she matters and when she is upset one lunchtime and he sits and speaks with her and even gets her to allow him to read some of her poetry she begins forming a bond to him and we can clearly see his interest in her even if Vanessa doesn’t notice it herself yet for what it is. Over the next couple of weeks, we can see the beginning of a relationship blossoming between the pair as Strane tests his boundaries with Vanessa and although she doesn’t completely understand what he is doing, she understands that he is testing her, and she doesn’t want to fail and allows the behaviour to continue. Back in the present, Vanessa meets up with her ex-boyfriend, Ira as he wants to know where she stands with Strane and when he learns that she hasn’t even mentioned it to her therapist and that she is actively defending him he is furious and storms off. This leaves Vanessa feeling like there is something wrong with her as she doesn’t feel that Strane abused her, but she is also stuck in a position that she cannot leave which is made evident when they meet. Here we learn that their relationship is over and done with since he couldn’t perform in the bedroom and we learn of their attempt 5 years before to reignite what they had when she was a teenager before admitting they wouldn’t have that type of relationship again.
As time passes Vanessa is beginning to learn of Strane’s attentions towards her and what they mean but she is getting increasingly frustrated that he hasn’t done anything about the attraction between them. However, through the poetry and books he lends her he is able to communicate the position he is in and she comes to understand how much he is risking by even thinking of her that way and when she is able to talk to him about this, they share their first kiss. This scene is critical as Vanessa is more focused on the bodily sensations of the kiss like Strane’s glasses digging into her cheeks rather than feeling anything significant. The pair spend the next two weeks stealing secret kisses from each other, but the break is quickly approaching, and Vanessa finds herself feeling sad since she won’t be able to communicate this and he does find it amusing but he also proposes the idea of her coming to his home once they return. At first this idea terrifies Vanessa not because of the implication of what it could mean for their relationship but because having sex is a big step for everyone and she can’t find much information on what to expect from her first time, but she does agree to it. However, we must note during this scene Strane tells Vanessa she has all the power in their relationship but she herself comments that being able to say no isn’t the same as being in control but right now she has no issue with Strane being in control as he is the more experienced party. Over the break, Vanessa constantly thinks of him and when they meet again when they return, we can feel a shift in their relationship.
By the time that day arrives, and we witness their first time together, I personally, got a little shock since I was expecting this to follow the standard fade to black that many authors employ during difficult scene or for it to be swept over and it was neither. Compared to Lolita where Humbert and Dolores’ first time is left deliberately vague to allow the reader to imagine what happened that doesn’t happen here, but we do see a duality here in more than one way. One duality is shown by the contrast but Strane’s word and actions. On the one hand, he is telling Vanessa she is able to say no and that she is in control, but he doesn’t give her any control which is seen when he pressures her into sex and despite her pain and the fact, she is crying he doesn’t stop. However, we also see a duality in Vanessa’s actions and emotions. In one moment, she feels like she is being pressured and has no control and wants it to stop and yet she does openly admit that the second time was better and that she even enjoyed it a little bit. Also, during the “foreplay” she openly loved having him perform oral sex on her and is stunned by how much stronger her orgasm was with him compared to doing it alone. It is here we are really beginning to see the root of the novel, as Vanessa is self-aware enough even at 15 to understand that Strane is manipulating her into doing what he wants but she has been manipulated enough not to care and to continue going along with him even though he is at times hurting her. By the time he returns her to her dorm the following morning, there has been a change in their relationship now Vanessa has become more aware of the kind of person Strane is but we also know from the present timeline that this “relationship” continues for another seven years before finally ending when she is 22 and there were attempts to reignite the relationship when she was 27, so the Vanessa in the present still doesn’t accept her abuse and doesn’t see herself as a victim even though it is clear to us the reader.
I also have to say I heard many people saying this book was a heavy read which it was, but the comments made about the level of detail being too much I disagree with. Hear me out, let’s take two authors who have openly said they are survivors of rape and sexual abuse: Kate Elizabeth Russell and Natasha Ngan. Ngan in the Girls of Paper and Fire series includes rape and sexual assault as major plot points especially in the first novel, but the actual abuse scenes are fade to black which infuriated me as a survivor myself because it felt like she was saying it was too much to even consider putting it on paper and I understand that was her choice and it was right but for me as a fellow survivor, it felt like those experiences were being shoved to the side in favour of a romance that would never happen in the real world since that person would be completely traumatized. Russell by contrast lays everything out in the open and basically screams this happens, pay attention to how sick it makes you feel and listen when people come to you saying they have been assaulted and that resonated with me on a really personal level. Back in the present, Strane has managed to keep his job and will back in the classroom very soon and Vanessa is conflicted about it as she still cares for Strane in some twisted way but also feels like there should have been some form of punishment for him as it gives him the opportunity to hurt more girls and when she receives an email from a journalist asking her to tell her story and I am almost sure Vanessa will take her up on the offer to tell her story and make it clear that she wasn’t the clear cut victim that many make her out to be but before we can see this we jump backwards to 2001.
As the months pass and Vanessa continues her relationship with Strane we see her begin to change. Vanessa seems to be completely disjointed from the world and in a deep depression, but she can’t bring herself to do anything about it because Strane has manipulated her so much. However, we also discover that their relationship isn’t as secret as the pair believe since her ex-best friend Jenny tells her of a rumour that she is having an affair with Strane, but this isn’t the only instance as Jesse for the school journal also knows about their relationship since he saw them together and he doesn’t really care only calling Vanessa an idiot. However, in one interaction Vanessa has with her dorm parent she lets slip that she and Strane are close and the teacher doesn’t like the vibes she got off Vanessa causing her to contact Strane and let him know about this. Consciously, I think Vanessa is doing this to test the boundaries of their relationship and see how easily others might pick up on it but subconsciously, it almost feels like she’s is asking for help to get out of the relationship, but people aren’t picking up on this. In the present, the journalist is pushing Vanessa to tell her story which is causing tension between her and Strane which is only made worse when it comes to light that there are now five girls accusing Strane of abusing them. Eventually their relationship does take a stumble, rumours have floated around the school for a while but now they need to be dealt with. When Jesse joins the list of people saying that Strane is in a sexually relationship with Vanessa, she takes responsibility telling the headmaster that she lied about the rumours and she started them. In the aftermath, Vanessa is forced to leave the school and she knows she can’t return and here I think her mother figures out that the rumours are true but there is nothing she can do about it if Vanessa won’t tell her the truth. Back in the present, Strane commits suicide due to the new allegations which leaves me wondering where the second half of the novel is going to go since Vanessa is grieving for him and still doesn’t see herself as a victim, she knows that Strane truly loved her and even shares this with her therapist when she is sure the information can’t be shared.
After Strane’s death Vanessa is once again asked by the journalist to tell her side of the story clearly since her old blog which has details of her and Strane’s relationship is once again public and it almost sounds like Vanessa is being blackmailed but she doesn’t agree, only saying she will think about it. We then spend a lot of time in the past in the time when Vanessa isn’t at Browick and eventually has her 18th birthday. We witness the gulf that emerges between her and her parents before she eventually reaches out to Strane to confront him about his role in getting her kicked out of the school and the letter he sent to the headmaster to cover his track when they had only begun their relationship. While he tries to reassure her that she wasn’t disposable to him and that he had been just as miserable we can feel something has changed in their relationship, she is more aware of him and doesn’t quite feel the same about him as she did when she was 15 but she continues to return to him. In these moments, she is never present when they have sex, her mind is always somewhere else and she even considers the notion that he is raping her for a moment before discarding it as she believes she would have to want him to continue coming back to him the way she has even though she is going off to college in the autumn. As she works over the summer, they pick up their relationship this time a little easier and freer because Vanessa is older but there is also a lot of anger and resentment hidden beneath Vanessa’s exterior that she is beginning to come to terms with.
By the time we reach the end of the novel, we are so emotionally spent that we utterly sympathize with all the characters. We sympathize for Taylor, for speaking out and the hate she received for it. We sympathize with Vanessa who can’t see her and Strane’s relationship as anything other than a love story or her whole life falls apart when she is barely managing to hold it together. We sympathise with Henry who had fell in love with two of his students and tried to protect Vanessa even when she didn’t want to be protected and most of all we end up sympathizing with Jacob Strane because he was correct when he said he didn’t touch any of the others girls the same way he touched Vanessa, that she was special to him and in a way she was despite the obvious abuse he put her through, you can see that somewhere in his twisted mind he did genuinely care for her and Vanessa cared for him and protected him right until the end, even after his death she maintained that she wasn’t like the other girls and she was angry at them for driving Strane to his death. However, in her final few therapy sessions that we do see, we can see Vanessa coming to terms with the idea that he abused her but she doesn’t want to use the abuse or victim labels because they are too simple to define what happened to her. My Dark Vanessa was a really insightful look into abuse, victimhood and how society treats both the victims and the abusers. If you haven’t read My Dark Vanessa yet then I highly recommend you read it.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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