My Dark Vanessa

There will probably be spoilers in here.

This novel by Kate Elizabeth Russell is one of the November challenge books for my online book club. It could definitely be triggering for some peeps with themes of rape, grooming, older teacher/younger student, substance abuse, and suicide too. The only thing missing was anorexia! I liked it though and thought the writing was excellent. The abundance of specific sensory details and emotions were so on point that I felt connected to Vanessa's world from page one. She is simultaneously disgusted by and attracted to Professor Strane when they first meet at the boarding school, and this makes sense ~ he isn't some studly 24 year old recent grad, but a paunchy, bearded, 42 year old teacher in a sweater. There is nothing about Strane physically that would make a 15 year old girl swoon with delight, but he pays close attention to Vanessa, noticing every nuance of her appearance, voice, mood, etc. (and she's been starved of attention), while simultaneously praising her intelligence and writing abilities. No one paid much attention to Vanessa previously, including her parents, plus she doesn't have close friends, either at home or at school. Also, not insignificantly, Vanessa isn't particularly attractive to boys her own age, partly because her looks are ordinary and partly because she doesn't have a bubbly personality, but to an older man who is turned on by awkward underage girls... Vanessa is a goddess. 

Strane's grooming is insidious. The reader can see it happening even as Vanessa doesn't and/or is trying to process it given her lack of maturity and experience. Sometimes we may imagine every rape as forceful and violent, but that's not always the case. Strane asks for and receives Vanessa's "consent" each step of the way. There are no threats of violence, overt or implied, only the possible withdrawal of his attention, which is enough to keep her motivated to please him. To our horror, Vanessa views her abuse as a "love story" and believes she has all the power in the relationship due to her ability to out Strane at any time. Yes, she does have that one bit of leverage, but he knows she isn't going to use it, and he reinforces the need for utter secrecy by describing how her life would also be ruined if their "affair" became known. Why wouldn't she believe him? She has no experience otherwise nor anyone to turn to for advice ~ and Strane is a Harvard grad to boot.

Of course, I found this book disturbing while at the same time enjoying the excellent writing. Often, evil is presented as binary and obvious, and thus it's unbelievable that anyone falls for it, but it's more often cloaked in a dizzying fog of gaslight accompanied by a tray of sweets. When evil is layered and complex, we can see how someone, especially a naive teenager, is slowly drawn into its silken web. Strane's abuse of Vanessa is a process, not a one-time event, and he makes sure to protect himself as much as possible along the journey. He doesn't even have to exert himself to get her to lie for him and ultimately throw herself under the bus so he can continue on unscathed; Vanessa believes everything is her own idea ~ she is making sacrifices for love because she is 100% bought into the idea that they are soulmates. Again, she relishes the delusion that she is a powerful goddess and Strane is under her spell. 

There are Lolita references sprinkled throughout the novel as well as other literary notes (Strane is an English teacher after all), and Russell dedicates the book to the fictional Dolores Haze (aka Lolita) as a stand-in for all the victims whose names we do not know. "My dark Vanessa" is a snippet from "Pale Fire," a poem by Nabokov (Lolita's author), that Strane refers to when suggesting that Vanessa has dark desires. She absorbs this idea and reinterprets it as her own, along with all his other suggestions that she is special and different, as opposed to simply being a lonely teenaged girl who should be hanging out with her peers. Strane worms his way inside her head until Vanessa believes that everything he wants she wants too, and later, when he's accused of misconduct, her only goal is to protect him.

I would have given this book five stars, except that the timeline is all jumbled. We begin in the present, then jump back to when Vanessa is 15, go forward, leap to the present, back to the past, etc. There is absolutely no good reason for this, since the story is compelling and could have simply been told chronologically. In fact, I think it would have been better that way. Maybe start with a teaser in present time then go back and stay back until we reconnect. It was a letdown to see Strane in the future when we weren't done with him 15 years prior. Jumping around in time created a distance for me as a reader, when otherwise I would have been totally immersed. Four stars.