My name is Heather White. I teach art history at Baylor University, and today I'll be reviewing 'My Dark Vanessa' the exceptionally well-written debut novel by author Kate Elizabeth Russell.
My Dark Vanessa is narrated by its protagonist, Vanessa Wye. In the year 2000, she enrolls at a private boarding school in Maine, where she is seduced by her English teacher Jacob Strane, Vanessa is 15, her teacher is 42.
The book jumps back and forth in time between 2000 when Vanessa is at boarding school, 2007 when she is in college, and 2017, when she is a young adult. In high school, Vanessa is full of potential and promise. She is thrilled by the extra attention she receives from her teacher. She's an extraordinary student who's expected to go far. From 2007 to 2017 Vanessa’s life slowly falls apart. Her affair with Jacob Strane has continued on and off over the years. She struggles with daily tasks, her relationships with her family and friends are dysfunctional, and she is clearly coping with an unhealthy amount of drugs, alcohol, and casual sex. By age thirty-two, Vanessa is stuck in a dead-end job at a hotel, she's exhausted and lost, and it's clear that her relationship with her teacher has derailed her life.
Throughout the book, Vanessa struggles to understand that she has been groomed. She desperately wants to believe that her sexual relationship with her teacher has always been a romance, not abuse. In 2017, Vanessa is forced to re-examine the story she has been telling herself about her relationship Jacob Strane when other female students from her former boarding school come forward with allegations of abuse by the English teacher.
I listened to My Dark Vanessa on audiobook and it was like listening to a friend tell me a very personal story. The woman who reads the audiobook aloud does a fantastic job of changing Vanessa's voice. When she is in high school, she is bright, energetic and hopeful, but her voice in the later years is tired, jaded and much darker. After I finished the audiobook, I missed Vanessa, where was this complicated friend who had been confiding in me over the last few weeks?
Kate Elizabeth Russell spent over twenty years writing My Dark Vanessa. After a plagerism accusation in the literary world, Russell reluctantly disclosed that the story was inspired by her own experiences as a teenager. It was published in 2020, and has been called, “Lolita for the #MeToo era, but if Lolita were the narrator.”
This book is about power, trauma, survival, memory, and the monumental challenge of healing. It is a devastating read that explores the confusion and disorientation of loving an abuser. If you are up for a thought-provoking book by a stunning new author, add My Dark Vanessa to your reading list.
