My Dark Vanessa
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Reviewed by Jess
📘📘📘📘📘
From the outset of this book you grasp two things immediately: 1) that Vanessa is clearly a loner and an outsider and 2) she’s clearly in need of some serious help - way more than she’s currently getting.
“At Browick, he said... I was the first student who put the thought in his head. There was something about me that made it worth the risk.”
From start to end this is one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever read. One night I was putting it away and thinking, I need a BREAK!!! But the next night I’d stay up til 1am unable to put it down. A lot of Vanessa’s story is borderline nauseating to read - especially her time in the classroom with her teacher/groomer/abuser - but also deeply thought provoking. In Vanessa’s world this is an extremely adult relationship, one of love and trust and desire, but we know it’s one of coercion and control and manipulation. It’s so difficult to know she’s denying this trauma but even worse to see that she sees it as so vital to her life. There’s a huge gulf between you as the reader and Vanessa, so you never quite connect. You’re always looking in, helpless.
I think that’s maybe what Kate Elizabeth Russell intended to convey; the hold abusers have on their victims, and how often there’s nothing anyone else can do to help til they want to help themselves overcome feelings they’ve thought were real for so long. It forces you as a reader to suspend your judgement of Vanessa, something which we can afford to give all women who have been through any type of abuse when they come forward, no matter the time or place. I couldn’t truly rate this book because it’s unlike anything I’ve read before (yes, even Lolita!) but I’m giving it 5 for the hold it still has on me months after I read it.
