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melannrosenthal 's review for:
My Dark Vanessa
by Kate Elizabeth Russell
I’m really in awe. I’m shocked by how quickly I devoured Russell’s wonderful prose and how damn accessible it was to both picture and relate to. This is something truly dark and special. Julie Buntin blurbed it as “gripping” and “important” which was ironic because of how much the tone reminded me of her book, Marlena. Stephen King calls it a “well-constructed package of dynamite”. I have to agree with all the advance praise. I can’t wait for more of you to read it though I must say that much is hard to read and many should be wary of the CW/TW for sexual assault.
Vanessa in the present, 2017, is barely holding her life together. She’s still grieving the death of her father in therapy and smoking weed daily to cope with that and her so-so job at the concierge of a hotel. She’s confronted with all that she never made of herself when she is bombarded by a survivor of sexual harassment and assault, a young woman who attended the same boarding school as Vanessa did for a time. The other woman is accusing a man, Jacob Strand, an English teacher there, who is still a friend of Vanessa’s though of course it’s complicated. He calls her begging for her support in all the media attention and he blames #MeToo and the puritanic society for what he’s going through. Vanessa holds herself on the razor’s edge, dodging calls from Taylor, the accuser, and a journalist she’s working with, refusing to admit that she was ever a victim of Strane, that whatever happened was consensual even if she was only 15 when it all began.
Every other chapter brings the reader back to 2000 and the remaining intervening years, to show the beginning so readers can see what really went on and what didn’t and who should be believed. Much of the present chapters is cringeworthy because of Vanessa’s denial but the years move forward and Strane ages and continues to manipulate and make excuses for behavior it becomes clear that Vanessa’s past has greatly shaped her psyche and her ability to empathize or not. Though I ended this book wondering about many outstanding questions, I knew for sure that the kind of trauma she suffered is lasting and there may be some controversy over some of Vanessa’s words, that will be because her character is meant to be flawed and troubled and questionable because her childhood shaped her adulthood and like many people in the real world, we and she are working through it.
Vanessa in the present, 2017, is barely holding her life together. She’s still grieving the death of her father in therapy and smoking weed daily to cope with that and her so-so job at the concierge of a hotel. She’s confronted with all that she never made of herself when she is bombarded by a survivor of sexual harassment and assault, a young woman who attended the same boarding school as Vanessa did for a time. The other woman is accusing a man, Jacob Strand, an English teacher there, who is still a friend of Vanessa’s though of course it’s complicated. He calls her begging for her support in all the media attention and he blames #MeToo and the puritanic society for what he’s going through. Vanessa holds herself on the razor’s edge, dodging calls from Taylor, the accuser, and a journalist she’s working with, refusing to admit that she was ever a victim of Strane, that whatever happened was consensual even if she was only 15 when it all began.
Every other chapter brings the reader back to 2000 and the remaining intervening years, to show the beginning so readers can see what really went on and what didn’t and who should be believed. Much of the present chapters is cringeworthy because of Vanessa’s denial but the years move forward and Strane ages and continues to manipulate and make excuses for behavior it becomes clear that Vanessa’s past has greatly shaped her psyche and her ability to empathize or not. Though I ended this book wondering about many outstanding questions, I knew for sure that the kind of trauma she suffered is lasting and there may be some controversy over some of Vanessa’s words, that will be because her character is meant to be flawed and troubled and questionable because her childhood shaped her adulthood and like many people in the real world, we and she are working through it.