Kate Elizabeth Russell

A Novel

My Dark Vanessa

2000: Bright, ambitious fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017: Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa. Now Vanessa 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? -- adapted from jacket

Sophia

I let him do what he wants—remove everything, lay me across the bed—even though everywhere he touches hurts. He spreads my legs, buries his face into me, and there are tears in my eyes, on my cheeks. It’s my birthday in two days. I’ll be twenty-two. Seven years of my life defined by this. When I look back, I won’t see anything else.

“He was a grown man and you were fifteen,” she says. “What could you have possibly done to torture him?”

For a moment I’m speechless, unable to come up with an answer besides, I walked into his classroom. 

It hurt then and it hurts now, his heavy limbs and sandpaper hands, a knee prying my legs apart. How can he be ready again? The bottle of Viagra in the bathroom cabinet, puke crusting together a lock of my hair. Him on top, his body so big it could smother me if he weren’t careful. But he is careful and he is good and he loves me and I want this.

I still feel torn in two when he pushes inside, will probably always feel this way, but I want it. 

Between breaths, he says, “I want you to come.” I want you to stop, I think. But I don’t say it out loud—I can’t. I can’t talk, can’t see. Even if I force my eyes open, they won’t focus. My head is cotton, my mouth gravel. I’m thirsty, I’m sick, I’m nothing.

He keeps going, faster now, which means he’s close, only a minute or so left. A thought shoots through me—is this rape? Is he raping me?

Strane has me recount what Jenny said to me word for word, and when I get to the part where she called him a creep, his eyes bug out like he can’t believe anyone would ever accuse him of that. He calls her a “smug little bitch” and for a moment my body goes cold. I’ve never heard him use that word before.

He pushes into me then, braces his legs against the arm of the couch and groans into my ear.

’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.

Behind his glasses, his eyes dilate from wanting. 

Sometimes when he’s on top of me, when he’s moaning with his eyes squeezed shut and not even noticing if I’m excited or sad or bored, I get the feeling all he really wants is to leave part of himself inside me, to stake his claim, not to impregnate me or anything like that, but something more permanent. 

He wants to make sure he’ll always be there, no matter what.

 He wants to leave his fingerprints all over me, every piece of muscle and bone.

He waits for my answer, for me to say yes, I am those things, but what he describes isn’t how I’ve ever thought of myself, and his memory of me chasing after him seems wrong, too.

He gave me books before I ever gave him poems. He was the one who said he wanted to kiss me good night, that my hair was the color of red maple leaves. That all happened before I even realized what was really going on. Then I think of him insisting that I’m the one in charge and that he doesn’t care about the nonexistent dalliances I’ve had before him.

There are things he needs to believe in order to live with himself, and it would be cruel for me to label these as lies.

“I want you to say ‘I love you, Daddy.’”

For a second, I laugh. It’s just so ridiculous. Daddy. I don’t call my own father that, can’t ever remember calling him that, but as I laugh my mind flies out of me and I don’t find it funny anymore. I don’t find it anything. I’m empty, gone.

“Go on,” he says. “I love you, Daddy.”

I say nothing, eyes fixed on my bedroom door.

“Just once.” His voice haggard and rough.

I feel my lips move and static fills my head, white noise so loud I barely hear the sounds my mouth makes or the sounds of Strane—heavy breathing and groans. He asks me to say it again, and again my mouth forms the words, but it’s just my body, not my brain.

I wonder if he’s thinking of me at fifteen, or if he’s thinking of the last time we tried, five years ago, at his house, in his bed with the flannel sheets. We tried to re-create the first time, me in flimsy pajamas, the lights low. It didn’t work. He kept going soft; 

This is so disgusting the author really outdid herself

I know he wants the truth and that I should tell him I didn’t like being woken up by him hard and practically pushing into me. That I wasn’t ready to have sex this way. That it felt forced. But I’m not brave enough to say any of this—not even that I feel sick to my stomach when I think about him guiding my hand to his penis and don’t understand why he didn’t stop when I started to cry. That the thought I want to go home ran through my head the entire time we first did it.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Russell manages a brutal originality. . . . [an] exceedingly complex, inventive, resourceful examination of harm and power.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice “To call this book a ‘conversation piece’ or ‘an important book’ feels belittling . . . [it] is so much more than that. It’s a lightning rod. A brilliantly crafted novel.”—The Washington Post A most anticipated book by The New York Times • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Marie Claire • Elle • Harper's Bazaar • Bustle • Newsweek • New York Post • Esquire • Real Simple • The Sunday Times • The Guardian 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. 2000. 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.

jana 

I am smart and I am strong – more than anyone understands.

Ribs

That seems the likely ending to this love story: me dropping everything and doing anything, devoted as a dog, as he takes and takes and takes.

I'm starting to understand that the longer you get away with something, the more reckless you become, until it's almost as if you want to get caught.

juana de arco si estuviera cronicamente online

“I’m no longer myself; I am no one. I’m a red balloon caught in the boughs of a tree. I’m nothing at all”

An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher ALL HE DID WAS FALL IN LOVE WITH ME AND THE WORLD TURNED HIM INTO A MONSTER Vanessa Wye was fifteen-years-old when she first had sex with her English teacher. She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student. Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn't abuse. It was love. She's sure of that. Forced to rethink her past, to revisit everything that happened, Vanessa has to redefine the great love story of her life - her great sexual awakening - as rape. Now she must deal with the possibility that she might be a victim, and just one of many. Nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and powerful, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to the heart of some of the most complex issues of our age.

ariah 

He fell at my feet before he even kissed me

Laura Wilson

I wonder if he really believes that. He touched me first, said he wanted to kiss me, told me he loved me. Every first step was taken by him. I don't feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn't the same as being in charge. But maybe he has to believe that. Maybe there's a whole list of things he has to believe.

Henry's mouth falls open, sympathy emanates out of himn, and the more affected he looks, the more I want to talk. A momentum gains withın me, an increased righteousness, a sense that I lived through something horrible, a disaster so stark it split my life in two. And now, in the aftershock of survival comes the desire to tell. Shouldn't I be able to tell this story if I want to? Even if I manipulate the truth and obscure the details, don't I deserve to see the evidence of what Strane did to me on another person's sympathetic face?

You were so brave then, more a warrior than a girl. You were my own Joan of Arc, refusing to give in even as the flames licked your feet.Does that bravery exist in you still? Look at these papers, evidence of how much you loved me. Do you recognize yourself?

Lulu Evensen

When I was a kid, Dad and I used to joke that when dogs bark all they're saying is I'm a dog! I'm a dog!I'm a dog! But these barks are desperate and scared. They sound more like please please please

The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they're nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.

"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."

"Because if it isn't a love story, then what is it?"

He was careful. He was good. He loved me." I say that over and over, a refrain that turns meaningless so quickly. He loved me, he loved me.

"It's fine," he says. But I want him to tell me that I'm not a mess at all. I am beautiful, precious, and rare.

this book is one that made me want to study themes, delve deeper, and also peel my skin off! it’s so well built, well understood and a super interesting take on power imbalance dynamics. some parts were a little on the nose, certain sentences felt like they could have just been the reader’s on thoughts of a situation - but they were forced on you and it felt a little like babying? like leave some to the imagination. mega fucked up but unputdownable

There were moments throughout this book where I had a physiological response, that stomach sinking feeling, knot in your throat, in those moments of danger. Reading this book was uncomfortable, which is necessitated given the themes of the book. It was especially sad to me when I realized Vanessa had yet to fully begin to unpack the extent of her abuse. It also left me unsettled to think the inflictor was able to cowardly escape the repercussions of his actions, that Vanessa was not able to face Strane in his true light, to force him to face the child and young woman he abused. So devastating but so raw.

Karen

The book was very well written but I would never recommend it to anyone.

The fmc was unlikeable but not in a way that allows you to hate her. As much as she denies it or refuses to see the truth, she was so deeply traumatized. The teachers (yes, plural) made me sick to my stomach.

The ending didn't give me the closure I was hoping for. It wouldn't have been fair otherwise, I suppose, since the women didn't get any closure either.

The book was very well written but I would never recommend it to anyone.

The fmc was unlikeable but not in a way that allows you to hate her. As much as she denies it or refuses to see the truth, she was so deeply traumatized. The teachers (yes, plural) made me sick to my stomach.

The ending didn't give me the closure I was hoping for. It wouldn't have been fair otherwise, I suppose, since the women didn't get any closure either.

she just needed it to be a love story. because it was a whole life wasted. i am screaming crying and throwing up😭😭

I’ll be staring at the wall for the foreseeable future

Anna Oeltjenbruns

This was a difficult read but it was worth it. The book being told through the victims pov made the book more interesting. I felt so much rage because she wasn’t doing “what I would’ve done” but I think that made the book better. I think we’re supposed to get angry and/or feel pity. 

🥔

I really enjoyed 'My Dark Vanessa' despite feeling so much rage at the horror of what I was reading. I'm so glad Kate Elizabeth Russell decided to write from Vanessa's perspective rather than that of her teacher, despite being told that her voice would be unrelatable. It was just so well written, and really put into perspective the often insidious nature of grooming, and the means in which it has been 

Rebecca Bream

I really enjoyed 'My Dark Vanessa' despite feeling so much rage at the horror of what I was reading. I'm so glad Kate Elizabeth Russell decided to write from Vanessa's perspective rather than that of her teacher, despite being told that her voice would be unrelatable. It was just so well written, and really put into perspective the often insidious nature of grooming, and the means in which it has been allowed to take place. 

My Dark Vanessa was an incredibly difficult but worthwhile read. The writing is so vivid that it made my skin crawl, hence I had to pace myself a lot when reading it. Nonetheless, I think it provides a well-needed perspective on surviving sexual assault and grooming, I think this book has a lot of uncomfortable truths in it. How we as a society have a certain understanding of what it means to be a victim and how victims should behave,  and when this expectations are not met we usually become suspicious. There is no such thing as a perfect victim and My Dark Vanessa makes this clear.

As well as that My Dark Vanessa highlight exactly how destructive grooming is, and how its effects last a lifetime, it also shows that no two victims are the same. Therefore I think this can be a beneficial book to read to understand and tackle these heavy themes. I will advise however is child sexual assault, grooming or victim blaming are triggering topic for you, it maybe better for you to steer clear, as everything in the book is described in excruciating detail

Marz 

My Dark Vanessa was an incredibly difficult but worthwhile read. The writing is so vivid that it made my skin crawl, hence I had to pace myself a lot when reading it. Nonetheless, I think it provides a well-needed perspective on surviving sexual assault and grooming, I think this book has a lot of uncomfortable truths in it. How we as a society have a certain understanding of what it means to be a victim and how victims should behave,  and when this expectations are not met we usually become suspicious. There is no such thing as a perfect victim and My Dark Vanessa makes this clear.
As well as that My Dark Vanessa highlight exactly how destructive grooming is, and how its effects last a lifetime, it also shows that no two victims are the same. Therefore I think this can be a beneficial book to read to understand and tackle these heavy themes. I will advise however is child sexual assault, grooming or victim blaming are triggering topic for you, it maybe better for you to steer clear, as everything in the book is described in excruciating detail

Elena Favret

radhika dhawan

i have never felt this much visceral anger towards a book (but in a good way because it seems like that’s the author’s goal)

emelia grace ilgner

totally engaging. couldn’t put it down. masterclass in conflict and characters.

Ryan Mateyk

wow i'm surprised by how much i enjoyed this (though "enjoyed" is kind of a strange way to describe reading this book). the writing was impeccable, vanessa was such a complex character, and it deftly deals with touchy subjects.

Kaitlin Simpson

Well Written

This book is written very well, but the subject matter is so dark and heavy it’s hard to read at some points.

lex 📖

the last line of the book really hits. its her realizing that she can let go. all of this is coming to light and she can finally start her life freely without the restraints of strane. the portrayal of her denial and her rationalization of what he did to her and how he hurt her scratches an itch in my brain i dont like. the disassociation back to her safe place on the ice, gliding along the surface is in my opinion written beautifully. Overall, good book. a bit heavy, 9/10 :) 

Elisavet Rozaki 

maya

this was written so beautifully but it was so so so hard to read, yet so important. 

(this deserves 5 stars but i would never want to experience it again)

Lis Amorelli

Liked this enough, was a bit miffed by detailed descriptions of sex while she was underage… but it’s very real. I was concerned if this was to romanticize the “Lolita” dynamic just as poorly as that story did, but I was pleasantly surprised. Also a very good portrayal of the imperfect victim. Being a victim doesn’t mean you’re forced to speak out, to fix the wrongs with your experience and to serve justice.

no rating…but..this was definitely a book!

Raven K

Caroline

It's been a while since I finished reading this book and I'm still wrapping my head around it. My Dark Vanessa is an extraordinary and beautifully written debut by kate Elizabeth Russell. The character of Vanessa is very relatable as the story of Vanessa wye can be any teenage girls story, who like Vanessa may have strongly believed its was true love and as a adult is still failing to acknowledge that she was once a victim of sexual abuse. I loved the way the author touches on the subject of sexual abuse and how a sexual assault as a teenager can change ones whole life forever. 

The way the book alternate between past and present of Vanessa life makes it more interesting to read. The explicit sexual scenes can be a bit discomforting at times though. 

The book also a draws in a lot of context from the book LOLITA but only told this time from the victims prospective. 

My Dark Vanessa was not a easy read but a one I'm glad I read. I highly recommend reading this book. But be cautious, as this book triggers content warning of sexual abuse and sexual intimate scenes.

well. as blunt and possibly even rude it is to say, vanessa is unbearable, HOWEVER she is genuinely a good character study of how grooming truly affects kidss/teenagers and shapes them into the person the groomer wants them to be. of course i sympathize with her and understand why she thinks the way he does and goes out on such a limb to believe she needed to protect strane and blame herself for everything. it's understandable that she is unbearable and couldnt even stomach the thought of herself being a victim, given how strane spoke and acted with her. my god, taylor truly said it best about the way he speaks to the girls and making himself a victim and as if they're the ones in charge. anyway the book was honestly well written, intense and incredibly interesting. 

My Dark Vanessa A Novel

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