My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. Advance Reader Copy (eARC) from the publisher via Netgalley included. No affiliate links used. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
Vanessa Wye was 15 when her relationship with her English teacher first began. So what that he was her teacher, they were in love. That counts for something, right? The answer for Vanessa is yes, their love counts for everything. At least it used to. Now she is questioning everything.
Told across two timelines, her school days in 2000 and the growing Me Too movement of 2017, My Dark Vanessa* is an uncomfortable read, as it should be. Yet Kate Elizabeth Russell’s writing also makes it a compelling read. I can see why it is triggering for many people, particularly survivors of sexual assault, especially because Russell doesn’t shy away from depicting scenes of sexual abuse and rape.
When a former student publicly states that she was sexually assaulted by Jacob Strane, Vanessa doesn’t know how to react. Strane insists the allegations are not true and Vanessa wants to believe him because the man she loved couldn’t possibly be a sexual predator.
Switching between the past and Vanessa’s present, we watch Strane groom Vanessa and see the hold he continues to have over her life 17 years later. As Vanessa rethinks their entire relationship her understanding of what really happened shifts, multiple times, as she grapples with the realisation that while she doesn’t see herself as a victim or survivor they may in fact be accurate descriptors for her. This evolution is really well handled by Russell and is as complicated and messy as you’d expect.
It is difficult to discuss My Dark Vanessa without mentioning the controversy and discourse surrounding the novel’s publication. An essay in Gay Magazine by Wendy C. Ortiz explores the similarities between My Dark Vanessa and Ortiz’s 2014 memoir, Excavation. Ortiz’s shares her experience of the publishing industry and how some stories are considered too difficult when they are memoir, but are deemed worthy of large(er) marketing campaigns when they are fiction.
In a note to readers on her website, published in response to Ortiz’s essay and the media coverage it garnered, Kate Elizabeth Russell says that “My Dark Vanessa, which I’ve been working on for nearly 20 years, was inspired by my own experiences as a teenager. I have previously discussed the relationships I’ve had with older men and how those relationships informed the writing of My Dark Vanessa. But I do not believe that we should compel victims to share the details of their personal trauma with the public.”
Ortiz does not accuse Russell of plagiarism, which is how some news outlets reported the story, but she does ask us to interrogate not only whose stories get to be told but how they are told. These are necessary questions and should be welcomed, always. Nor does Ortiz insist that people who write fiction about sexual abuse must disclose their personal experience in order to do so.
No one is calling for that.
But there needs to be space to discuss disparities within the publishing industry, particularly when it comes to the voices of marginalised people, in a way that recognises the nuances involved.
I wish I knew how to achieve that.
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is published by Fourth Estate and is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook format.
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