A review by chelsloukelly
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

5.0

5/5 Stars: ‘My Dark Vanessa’ is an Adult, Dark Contemporary by Kate Elizabeth Russell; ‘My Dark Vanessa’ offers a creepy account of abuse and an overwrought teenage girl’s love story at the time; one is superimposed on the other. It toggles between two parallel timelines as it meticulously tracks the eponymous narrator’s affair with her New England Boarding School English Teacher, which began in 2000, when she was 15 and he was 42, and her painstaking, reluctant recognition 17-years later - in the midst of the #MeToo movement - of the devastation it has wrought on her life. Russell offers a nuanced portrait of why some women refuse to view themselves as victims of abuse: ‘He loved me, he loved me,’ Vanessa insists. This upsetting novel, of which I place a heavy trigger warning upon, powerfully unpacks so much about the trauma of abuse, victimhood, silencing, misplaced guilt, power, consent, and wayward desire, is a significant addition to the necessary reassessments and conversations sparked by the #MeToo movement.