I'm going to start this book review with content warnings due to the nature of the story. This book depicts pedophilia, adult/minor relationships, grooming, sexual abuse, suicide, victim-blaming, and other disturbing content. As always, I recommend checking StoryGraph for a full list of content warnings. This book is extremely dark and difficult to read. I advise interested parties to ensure the safety of their minds and bodies before and while reading.
To be completely honest, I'm not sure why I picked up this book. I had seen it on Tiktok, but I don't know why it appealed to me. The description of this book is not a light one. This is a dark book with very serious content. It was a difficult read.
This book is about a woman named Vanessa who in 2001 engaged in an affair with her high school teacher at the age of fifteen. In 2017, Vanessa is a woman in her thirties when the teacher she had an affair with, Strane, has other allegations of sexual abuse of students brought against him. The book goes from the present in 2017 to the past in which Vanessa is having her affair with Strane and growing up.
Kate Russell says she wrote this book after reading Lolita as a young woman. Personally, I only got about halfway through Lolita. I felt the need to read it as it is a classic, but the book is disgusting. It reads like an excuse for pedophilia and an effort to make you empathize with a pedophile, regardless of the author's intentions. It is not a love story. Russell said that she wrote this book and wished that she would have read it alongside Lolita.
My Dark Vanessa is the story of the victim of sexual abuse, but it's more complicated than that. Vanessa does not see herself as a victim, she was a willing participant, she claims, although there are multiple instances in which it is very clear she was not. She puts a lot of the responsibility for Strane's choices on herself despite the fact that he was a forty-two-year-old man capable of making decisions for himself.
This book is frustrating. Vanessa blames herself, she victim-blames and minimizes the experiences of the other girls hurt by Strane. She lets herself be caught up in his way of thinking throughout her life. She stays caught up in him until he dies.
This book also made me realize how easily a teacher could have done this to me. I adored many of my teachers. I was desperate for love and attention in the same way Vanessa is. I was also in an abusive relationship my freshmen year of high school although with a person my own age. It reminded me of a teacher I had as a freshman, who took a special interest in me. He brought a book he specifically wanted me to read and wouldn't take it back when I brought it to him. He paid me special attention in class. He brought me a soda for my birthday, which he did for no other students. This teacher was asked to leave the school (I'm not sure what for, but I suspect it was due to inappropriate interactions with students). I wonder if he would've tried to do what Strane did had he stayed. Perhaps I'm looking too much into that.
Despite the difficulty of this book, I'm glad I read it. Vanessa expressed a lot of the feelings I felt when recovering from my own abuse. She shows the victim's side but without becoming nothing more than the victim. This book made me think deeper about what it means to be a victim and what it means to be a survivor and how abuse can define a person. We are more than what the person did to us. I think that this can be a valuable read for people who have experienced similar things.
I appreciate Russell's decision to write something like Lolita but from the eyes of the Lolita instead of the eyes of the abuser. The survivor's story is far more important than that of the perpetrator anyway.
Overall, I was very moved by this book. I found myself heavily annotating my copy as I read through it. It is a worthwhile read despite the disturbing content present. It is definitely something I will be keeping o my shelf. My copy of Lolita, however, will be given away.
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