My Dark Vanessa: Book Review

I just finished reading My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. This book is about a fifteen year old girl who goes to a boarding school and is groomed into a relationship with a teacher. The story follows two timelines, one in the past, where you see her as a kid being drawn in slowly by the actions of her teacher, and then the present day, where you see her as a thirty-two year-old woman being forced to come to grips with her past. Was the relationship as she had made it out to be, or was there something else buried underneath that she needs to grapple with?

This is a highly psychological novel, and it explores the mentality of victims of SA, especially ones who were groomed from a young age.

I think I can provide a different perspective from some of the reviews that I have seen, because I have not read the book that this one is consistently compared to: Lolita by Vladimir Nabikov. I will eventually, after having read this, but as of writing this review, I have no knowledge of that text.

Opening

I think the opening of the book is among the best that I have read. It involves the use of subversion, except done in the right way. The reader is led to believe that the main character has made a particular decision and will consequently play a particular role in the story—but as the story progresses, you realize that she is actually playing a different role entirely. Your understanding of the story is immediately thrown into flux, tossing everything into ambiguity. And this is not just another cheap example of subversion for its own sake. The subversion highlights a key point of contention in debates about SA, particularly relating to victims' attitudes about their abuse and how that influences their decisions later down the line.

Why don't some women come forward with their accusations? Read on.

Theme

I

I think the strongest thing this story has going for it is the themes, namely the long term impact that abuse can have on someone. Given the fact that we see the character from two different timelines—when she is a young girl, and when she is an adult in her thirties—we get to see how it started, and then where things end up. And Russell does not hold back on looking at some of the more horrifying effects that abuse can have on someone. It helps highlight the complex emotions that someone has around their abuse and how they rationalize and make excuses for what happened to them in their past, quite simply because they can't accept that what they considered to be love was not actually the romance they thought it to be. It explains why people often do not come forward about abuse, or take a long time to come forward, and also why they might have baffling reactions to abuse: i.e. why would they continue to date their abuser.

People often assume that a victim will have a sobering reaction to an assault, but that is not always the case. In the context of a relationship, there can be complex emotions that complicate their interpretation of things, especially if the relationship starts out young, as it did with Vanessa. And this is why cases that involve rape are so fraught. Already, it is so hard to prove assault, and with emotional complexities driving some victims to wait to accuse, it only makes it harder to prove, if not impossible. There are no easy answers, as I discussed in my review of Beartown.

II

Another theme is the twisting of the idea of control. Mr. Strane, the abuser, is a man who needs to believe that Vanessa is in control of the situation. When looking at their relationship as a whole, the question of who has control is quite complex. In the beginning, Strane is the one who is breaking down the barriers. He is the one inching ever forward, like brushing his knee against hers, but then not moving it, or putting his hand on her knee, or more. He gave her Lolita. At the same time, she was the one who essentially asked him out. The effect was to create an illusion of control on her part, where she felt that she was the one making the decisions, when technically he was the one who made all the suggestions and put the idea in her head in the first place.

However, the situation becomes more complicated as the story progresses, and she becomes older. Naturally, the power dynamic changes, and the story forces you to consider the shifting dynamic—especially in the most recent timeline, when she is thirty-two. The nature of their relationship changes, not just in terms of the power dynamic, but also in terms of their connection, highlighting the nature of the relationship from the outset.

III

Another thing that I thought was well-handled was the lack of heavy-handed moralizing. A story like this has the potential to be oppressive in its messaging, but it was not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Now that said, there were some parts where I thought there was either the authorial voice reaching through the perspective, or the child character was showing a bit too much self-awareness. Specifically, and this is not a spoiler, I am referring to parts where Vanessa would note how Mr. Strane would say something like, "You're the one in control, here," and the text would comment with something like, "But he's the one who touched my knee first. Maybe this is something he needs to believe." Particularly for this last part, I think it is a little too self-aware for the girl to comment on. Either that, or Russell was breaking perspective and using her authorial voice. Regardless, I thought it was unnecessary. An astute reader can understand the sequence of events just fine.

Structure

One thing that I liked about the story is the structure, namely the two storylines, and particularly how they were strung together to create a whole narrative. Seeing Vanessa in both timelines was important, and I also thought it was important to see things as Vanessa saw them as a child. I don't think the story would have been what it could have been if it were simply recollections of the past.

I did briefly think about different ways in which the story could have been structured, however, even wildly creative ones.

I considered structuring the story so that it would be set entirely within the psychiatrist's room, with one-on-one conversations between the two. That would remove the in-real-time telling of the past and make it into literal recollections, but it would also be an interesting literary twist.

A simpler change was just to have the past storyline told in the past tense. This is minor, and it was more of a pet peeve. I don't know why both storylines were told in the present tense.

A last major change would be to tell the story from beginning to end, with time jumps here and there. Start the story when she is fifteen and proceed from there. I've often found that people avoid telling stories like this, now, maybe because it makes the telling less brutal. The reader knows what is coming, so they at least have a chance to prepare themselves for it. I really want to know how the story would change if the story was narrated in a linear manner, though.

Character

I

Vanessa is a difficult character to grasp in some respects, because we have an unreliable narrator. She is told that she is unnaturally old for her age, especially in terms of emotional intelligence. At the same time, she is chastised for acting her actual age. We don’t know how much of a prodigy she is; the entire point is that many of these male professors, from Mr. Strane to Henry, all tell her that she is brilliant—though that very well could just be a grooming tactic. Vanessa is working a dead-end job at the start of the book, having gone nowhere in life. Is this because of the abuse or because she was never meant to make it as an academic, anyway? We will never know. Deliberate uncertainty like this is a mark of brilliant writing.

But her complexity truly comes out with her relationship to the other characters.

II

Mr. Strane is the other main character. He is the most defining person in Vanessa's life, being the man who groomed her from the outset. It is clearly established that he is not outright malicious or cartoonish in his motivations. There are two kinds of caricatures that could have been embraced. One, where he would have been a hawt boi in his twenties, with washboard abs, or another, where he would be this creeper who only ever wanted to hurt Vanessa every step of the way. The image I have in mind is the sly editing usually done in anime, where you get to see the inner thoughts of the character in question—and you see that Mr. Strane is up to no good.

But in this story, Mr. Strane is not that simple. His actual behavior may amount to the same thing, given the amount of harm that he ends up inflicting on Vanessa—and he certainly is a real creeper—but the cycle of her being guilt-tripped and reeled within his grasp was not necessarily something he was performing. It was a pattern of behavior that simply worked to his benefit.

III

The first side character worth discussing is Vanessa's mother. Behind the main relationship, she has one of the more complex side relationships with Vanessa. Something that stuck out to me was one of her mother's decisions as Vanessa was leaving Browick. It just struck me as completely unbelievable at the time. However, now that I know some of the rudimentary background details of the story, I might be able to speculate about why it was included. Something similar might have actually happened. That doesn't really explain it, but the possibility remains.

IV

The next two characters are Craig and Henry. Craig is an older man that she briefly talks to in person and then corresponds with in text online, until he starts to get pushy. This contrast with Mr. Strane shows the kind of manipulation that Strane engaged in with her, and this experience also explains why her attitude toward Strane remained as persistent as it did.

Henry is another example, where there is a slight twist on the relationship with Strane. There are similarities, but one factor is tweaked. It also shows how her relationship with Strane has affected her up into her years in college, and has potentially had catastrophic consequences.

I think the most significant thing to take away from these two characters is how Strane looms in from the background, throughout all of the experiences. He never truly leaves her at any point.

Prose

Because I did not read the original Lolita, I don't have a whole lot to talk about in the prose section, which I guess is a good thing, because Lolita is apparently a prose masterwork. It might be unfair to make the comparison. The one thing that stood out to me was the way in which Russell would strategically compress dialogue in the story to avoid padding out the page count. This is a good thing on its face. On the other hand, I often felt like there were some missed opportunities for significant conversations to be had between characters that were just brushed over. You still want to avoid repetition, I understand this. In fact, this is part of what made me consider the abnormal story structure, where the whole story would be told from the psychiatrist's room, essentially through dialogue.

I just know this is an experimental project in waiting.

Ending

I

I personally liked the second half of the novel. According to some readers, this was unnecessary, but I think it is important to follow Vanessa and show how the relationship that started in her teens has trailed behind her all the way through and even past college. This provided a complete picture of her life, and it was very important for communicating the key theme about the long term psychological impacts that this sexual abuse could have on her.

II

As for the actual ending, I especially liked it. I did not expect it at all. It did not end where I thought it would, and the character did not make the decisions that I thought she would, but in retrospect, I think this makes the story all the more impactful. It adds a level of complexity, showing that the answer first and foremost lies inward, and we should be careful to not romanticize movements, even ones built around a cause that we stand by.

I also like the open nature of the ending that was simultaneously not open-ended. There is technically some story ahead to traverse, yet we can see the direction that it is headed. It shows that you don't necessarily need a tidy little bow in order to wrap up a story.

The use of the dog in the end was an especially good choice, as it was symbolic. Mr. Strane's relationship with dogs was strained, to say the least, so there was narrative significance in her choice.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed My Dark Vanessa. I will give this book an 8/10.

Video: https://youtu.be/OVWqyWfpYFI