‘My Dark Vanessa’ by Kate Elizabeth Russell is a devastating novel, written with brutal honesty and agonizing emotion. I finished this book with tears in my eyes and an ache in my heart, a heaviness in my soul for all that this fictional character, and many, many women before her, had experienced. I went into this novel with only a vague idea of Vanessa’s story. I came out of it shaken, weak, and entirely drained, as if the very pages had taken me for every ounce of emotion I had. This is a book unlike any other I’ve read. It moved mountains within me, and shook me to my core. The only thing I’m sure of, is that I didn’t come out of this book unscathed.
In ‘My Dark Vanessa’, readers are witness to the development of a disturbing relationship between student and teacher. An almost thirty-year age-gap between them, Vanessa is just fifteen-years-old when she attends her first American Literature class, with forty-two-year old teacher, Jacob Strane. It is in this classroom where something dangerous and depraved is discovered, and this something goes on to contaminate every part of Vanessa and her life as the years pass by.
Russell chooses to take the reader back and forth between the past and the present in this novel, thus providing an insight into the beginning of Vanessa’s time in Strane’s classroom, but also a look at Vanessa now, as an adult. I feel this is the best possible way for the author to tell Vanessa’s story. In order for readers to truly understand, I feel it’s only right for Russell to take us back to the very start and lead us onwards from there. It opens Vanessa’s world up to us in a way that allows no secrets, and we are witness to Vanessa’s development as the plot progresses. In the present day, Strane is under scrutiny as claims are surfacing from another woman, who, like Vanessa, is a previous student. Taking social media by storm, Vanessa can only watch as the man she believed she loved, and who she believed loved her back, is accused of the very thing she experienced herself, but by someone else.
This is an extraordinary take on an incredibly sensitive and taboo topic. It’s no secret that Russell is a beautiful writer, and in this instance, heart-breakingly so. Her descriptions are so powerful, they only intensify the discomfort felt throughout. The author truly captures the sheer emotional turmoil felt by Vanessa as she looks back at the time she spent with Strane, and the things she thought she knew. This is not an easy book to read. There are many scenes I found unbearable, and I’m certain that if you’ve read this book too, then you’ll know instantly the scenes I’m referring to without me having to say anything else. It’s an eye-opening, frightening & gut-wrenching story, and I’m still reeling now. It’s one of those I feel you really need to let settle in your mind, because there is just so much to consider while reading it. Vanessa’s story evokes anger, fear, confusion and disgust, but on the other side of that, sadness, heartache and grief for a girl who thought she was adored when it was something else entirely. Russell brings forth many, many matters that we are only too aware of in our society today, which I think make this novel all the more compelling.
‘My Dark Vanessa’ is a stand-out, thought-provoking and deeply disturbing novel, there’s no doubt about it. I found it impossible to put down and even long after I finished reading it, it continued to brew in my mind and pull up numerous questions and considerations. Even now I’m thinking about Vanessa Wye, fictional or not. She is a character who will stay with me for a long, long time. This novel is receiving a five out of five rating from me. I can’t wrap my head around this being a debut. It was phenomenal, truly.
All he did was fall in love with me and the world turned him into a monster. Vanessa Wye was fifteen-years-old when she first had sex with her English teacher. She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student. Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn’t abuse. It was love. She’s sure of that. Forced to rethink her past, to revisit everything that happened, Vanessa has to redefine the great love story of her life – her great sexual awakening – as rape. Now she must deal with the possibility that she might be a victim, and just one of many.
You can purchase your copy of ‘My Dark Vanessa’ by Kate Elizabeth Russell here.
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