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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Mar 2020, 384 pages
Paperback:
Feb 2021, 384 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Kim Kovacs
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Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.
Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?
Alternating between Vanessa's present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.
Disclaimer
I grew up in Maine and was educated there—first at a private (day) school in ninth and tenth grades, until I withdrew for personal reasons, and later at college. Because of the similarities between those broad facts and certain fictional elements of My Dark Vanessa, I am aware that readers who are loosely familiar with my background may jump to the erroneous conclusion that I am telling the secret history of those events. I am not; this is a work of fiction, and the characters and settings are entirely imaginary.
Anyone who has been following the news over the past few years has seen stories that suggest the narrative of this novel, recast by my imagination. Into that I have worked other influences such as critical trauma theory, the pop culture and postfeminism of the early aughts, and my own complicated feelings toward Lolita. All of that is the normal process of fiction writing. But in a surfeit of caution it bears repeating that nothing in the novel is intended ...
My Dark Vanessa raises a number of complex questions: Is someone a victim of abuse if they believe they were complicit? What responsibility do people have to broadcast their painful experiences if doing so may prevent others from harm? What responsibilities do abusers have toward their victims when their actions have colored every aspect of their victims' futures? What does justice look like in these cases?..continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
My Dark Vanessa destroyed me. This moving, ferocious story of an all-consuming relationship between a teenager and her teacher traces not just a stolen girlhood, but the aftershocks that haunt trauma survivors years into the future. Gripping, stunningly written, and important...I've been waiting for this book. Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
A truly remarkable debut, deeply thoughtful, deeply emotional, compelling and disturbing in equal measure. I raced to the ending and then found the book lingered with me long after that last page. It is lingering still. Stephen King
My Dark Vanessa is a hard story to read and a harder one to put down...a well-constructed package of dynamite."
In My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, a much-older teacher begins his seduction of 15-year-old Vanessa Wye with poetry. One of the works he uses to draw her in is the 1962 Vladimir Nabokov novel Pale Fire. Specifically, a section of verse describes how a fictional poet, John Shade, met his wife on an outing to New Wye Falls. Shade goes on to proclaim his continued love for her over the years, comparing her to a butterfly (Nabokov was himself a known butterfly enthusiast) called a Vanessa, a.k.a. the Vanessa atalanta or Red Admiral, in line 270:
Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,
My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest
My Admirable butterfly! …
The instructor points out the obvious parallels to his young ...
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