My Dark Vanessa: A Novel Kindle Edition

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell:Russell presents the story of Vanessa Wye, a fifteen-year-old who becomes ensnared in the web cast by devious, psychologically wily forty-something English teacher, Jacob Strane, when Vanessa enrolls in an exclusive New England boarding school.The story of Vanessa’s psychological destruction is dark, disturbing, and disheartening but insightfully accurate. Vanessa is sharply precocious but socially insecure as are many bright adolescents. Strane is sufficiently knowledgeable to recognize that Vanessa is a potential accomplice for a sexual liaison. Russell’s portrayal of the careful psychological grooming of the victim by the predator and the culpability of the prey is spot-on. Also illuminating is the portrayal of the romantic need and emotional power of the youthful victim that are energized when the victim, Vanessa, is forced to protect her lover and her own view of the romance when the improper liaison finally comes to light.Many readers will (and have) find fault with Russell’s Vanessa being disappointed in Vanessa’s inability to see and accept how badly she was used and to admit how despicable the behavior of her lover. Some readers also complain that Russell presents no admirable characters---not her parents, not her school administrators, not her other classmates, not her post-high school boyfriend. They miss the reality in such cases of pedophilic accomplishment. The youthful victim is a victim because of the perfect storm of events and key figures in the victim’s milieu.There is, in fact, one shining knight in Vanessa’s eventual resurrection and that is Ruby, Vanessa’s psychiatrist. Ruby is aware that Vanessa’s recovery will take time, time to develop trust, time to strengthen what little positive self-image and ego strength still remain, and the ability to make a timely but necessary confrontation of Vanessa’s wall of defense. The end of the book gives hope that Ruby and Vanessa will find success in opening a new and brighter chapter in Vanessa’s life.Russell’s ability to capture the psycho-sexual hold that the pedophilic predator has on his/her victim makes for the accuracy and the allure of her telling. Two passages at the end of the book aptly illustrate her writing power. Vanessa is twenty-something, her life a mess, cannot successfully manage a mundane job, she hoards, her apartment and her personal appearance disheveled, has many meaningless sexual hook-ups (all often typically the result of a disastrous adolescent sexual experience), and one day spots Strane taking a classroom of students on an art museum tour:I’m twenty-five when it happens. Walking to work, wearing my black suit and black flats, I cross Congress Street and there he is, standing with a dozen kids in front of the art museum, teenagers, students, mostly girls. I watch from a distance, clutching my purse to my side.He lets the museum door close behind him and I go to work, sit at the concierge desk and imagine him moving through the rooms, trailing the bright-haired girls. In my mind, I follow along behind, don’t let him out of my sight. This, I think is probably what I’ll do for the rest of my life: chase after him and what he gave me. It’s my fault. I was supposed to have grown out of it by now. He never promised to love me forever.The next night he calls. It’s late, on my walk home from work, when the only lit-up windows downtown are the bars and pizza-by-the-slice places. The sight of his name on the screen makes my knees give out. I have to lean against a building when I answer.The sound of him grabs me by the throat. “Did I see you?” he asks. “Or was it a ghost?”He starts calling weekly, always late at night. We talk a little about who I am now—the hotel job, the never-ending parade of boys, my mom’s pursed-lip disappointment in me, my dad’s diabetes and bad heart—but mostly we talk about who I used to be. Together we remember the scenes in the little office behind the classroom, at his house, in the station wagon parked on the side of an old logging road, the rolling blueberry barren where I climbed on top of him, the chickadee call and apiary drone drifting in through the open car widow. Our details pool together. He and I re-create it vividly, too vividly.When he moves away from remembering me and begins to talk about the girls in his classes, I follow him. He describes the pale underbellies of their arms when they raise their hands, the tendrils that escape their ponytails, the flush that travels down their necks when he tells them they’re precious and rare. He says it’s unbearable, the way they drip with beauty. He tells me he calls them up to his desk, his hand on their knees. “I pretend they’re you,” he says, and my mouth waters as though a bell’s been rung, signaling a long-buried craving. I roll onto my stomach, shove a pillow between my legs. Keep going, don’t stop.Russell’s writing is almost lyrical, and you have to stop and remind yourself that she is describing the thoughts of a pedophile and the now indelible mind/body entrancement he has worked on the psyche of his victim.Richard R.

Take a look at the cover of “My Dark Vanessa.” (Go on. Look.)Now, look again. Reeaally look. Longer, this time.Is it me? Or does the photo not just say it all? Personally, I find the stark image of the woman’s face to be one of the saddest, most hauntingly beautiful photographs I have ever seen. Her melancholy expression instantly grabs one’s attention; her evident pain draws the observer in. It’s stunning – and it so artfully, wordlessly captures the devastating essence of Kate Elizabeth Russell’s debut novel.The narrative recounts the story of Vanessa, who at age 15, begins an illicit seven-year affair with her 42-year-old Literature teacher, Jacob Strane. Through the utilization of dual timelines, the novel essentially has two starting points. The year 2000, at the inception of Vanessa’s relationship with Strane; and the year 2017, at the height of the #MeToo era when Vanessa is forced to reexamine the affair under a more critical light as multiple allegations of abuse by Strane surface to the forefront. She has no choice but to consider anew the culpability of Strane and the contributions of her own actions.To say that I enjoyed “My Dark Vanessa” is a bit of a misnomer. For how could I possibly enjoy a tale of a pedophile abusing a 15-year-old girl? Because I didn’t. Yet, I did. Horrendous subject matter aside, the novel is a page turner. It is excellently written. It is compelling and powerful.But reading it is also an extremely dark, sexually graphic, heartbreaking, and emotionally grueling experience. It’s intentionally so. Russell aims for readers to feel discomfited. She wants us to feel outraged and unnerved as we behold the abuse of Vanessa on the page. She fearlessly shows us the how and the why of it.And the story rattles us to the core. Because the novel just feels REAL. It reads authentically. I cannot imagine finding a more honest fictional description of an abusive relationship between a teenage girl and an adult man than the one laid before us in “My Dark Vanessa.”We see how Strane chooses Vanessa with purpose and how he grooms her. We view Strane’s manipulation of Vanessa’s feelings, how he expertly reels her in. We observe the formation of a father-daughter bond between them. We bear witness to Strane gaslighting Vanessa and the blame he places on her shoulders, to the point where she can no longer trust her memories and does not know what to believe. We watch Vanessa repeatedly be raped by Strane while he disguises the abuse as love.Make no mistake. None of what happens to Vanessa is her fault. Not one bit. She is a child when it all begins. She is taken advantage of by an extremely sick man. Period. End of discussion.And here is where, as a reader, frustration is felt. Because Vanessa doesn’t recognize the abuse. She is symptomatically blind to it, years later, even at the age of 32. She fully believes she is an active, willing participant. The initiator, even. She determinedly clings to Strand and the relationship, considers him to be her one true love. Every fiber of her being defends him.And no. Strane never rapes her. Not according to Vanessa. She wants it. Needs it. Begs for it.“‘I can’t lose the thing I’ve held on to for so long. You know?’ My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. ‘I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.’‘I know,’ she says.‘Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?’I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy.‘It’s my life,’ I say. ‘This has been my whole life.’”It’s unbelievably sad how the abuse does, in fact, frame Vanessa’s entire life. It affects her family, her adult romantic relationships, her friendships. The psychological and emotional damage Strane inflicts on Vanessa is permanent and unwavering. She is a fractured woman, with sharp, jagged edges.“My Dark Vanessa” is a novel that is difficult to fully, wholeheartedly recommend due to the subject matter and graphic nature of the story. I recognize that not every reader will be able to tolerate it. But I believe it is an important novel and should be read by those who can mentally endure it.Vanessa’s story will widen your eyes and cause your mouth to gape open in horror. It will churn your stomach. You will long to wrap yourself in nothing but warmth, light, and happiness once you finish reading it.But you will likely neither regret, nor ever forget, the time you spent with Vanessa. I don’t. I won’t. Not one single minute of it.I think you will find it to be time well spent, reading a story well told.

My Dark Vanessa is a masterful and devastating novel that examines power, manipulation, and the long-lasting impact of abuse with unrelenting honesty. Kate Elizabeth Russell crafts a story that is as disturbing as it is mesmerizing, forcing readers to sit with the uncomfortable realities of grooming, coercion, and self-deception.Told in dual timelines, we follow Vanessa Wye at fifteen, when she becomes entangled in an abusive relationship with her much older English teacher, and again as an adult in 2017, when the #MeToo movement forces her to reassess everything she thought she knew. Russell’s writing is razor-sharp, immersing readers in Vanessa’s deeply conflicted mind. The novel does an exceptional job portraying the ways trauma distorts perception, and how survivors struggle to reconcile past experiences with present understanding.This is not an easy read, but it is an essential one. It challenges notions of agency, victimhood, and the insidious ways abuse hides in plain sight. Comparisons to Lolita are inevitable, but My Dark Vanessa gives voice to the girl in a way literature rarely does.