My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell | A Review

My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth’s Russell’s debut novel, is about a relationship between a 15-year old girl and her 42- year old high school English teacher while she attends the prestigious Browick boarding school. Vanessa narrates the story, taking us back and forth in time – during 2000, when the relationship first started as Jacob Strane began to groom her, and 2017, during Vanessa’s adulthood and in the midst of the Me Too Movement, a period when powerful men who’d previously gotten away with sexual abuse are finally held accountable. As more students come forward with allegations towards Strane, Vanessa is forced to reassess the true nature of her relationship with him.

This book is both addictive and uncomfortable to read. Vanessa, being young, naive, and in her seminal years, is quite easily taken by Strane’s attempts to charm and manipulate her – most certainly not with his looks, but with his words. It starts with inappropriate comments about her appearance and her poetry, referring to one of her poems as “sexy” and comparing her hair to the color of maple leaves. It starts with a touch of the knee. It starts with book recommendations that feature sexual relationships between older men and minors – like Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita. It’s interesting how Lolita shapes Vanessa’s understanding of their relationship. She becomes enamored with the dynamic between Humbert Humbert and Lo, drawing parallels between the dynamic between her and Strane.

Vanessa is intelligent, talented and full of potential. She’s also insecure, and at a point in her life where she’s trying to find herself and develop self-esteem. She begins to crave Strane’s praises and sexual advances, and he clearly knows this and has her right where he wants her. From the reader’s perspective, the grooming is obvious and unsettling. However, from Vanessa’s point of view, it is not grooming at all but true love. He is in love with her and she with him and for her, to call it grooming or abuse or rape is to diminish the love they had for one another. And what’s baffling is that she believes this well after high school and into her thirties.

Vanessa’s narration allows readers to really get inside her head and understand why she feels the way she does about Strane. As a reader, you see right through Strane’s abhorrent behavior and find nothing charming about him. However, it’s important to remember that Vanessa was only a child and this was her first sexual experience; he made her feel beautiful and special and desired, all at the age of 15, a period in a girl’s life when she comes of age and tries but often struggles to love herself. But after the initial high of feeling wanted wears off, Strane’s abuse quickly leads her down a path of desolation. Strane becomes her world, and I think this is what the novel accomplishes best – demonstrating the longterm emotional and psychological effects of abuse.

This brilliantly written yet deeply troubling novel is about a young girl who is manipulated by an older man into believing he really loves her. It’s a novel about an adult who uses and abuses a child and shows very little remorse for how his actions affect her. And it’s a novel about the consequences of not holding perpetrators accountable for their abuse. While difficult to get through at times, this novel is definitely worth a read.

Rating: 4/5