"My Dark Vanessa" by Kate Elizabeth Russell

My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

A book review

The #MeToo movement has led to the fall of many high and mighty men (less high and mighty ones too) and belated justice for many wronged women.  More importantly, however, this movement has highlighted that the issue of abuse on women goes deeper than just the immoral and illegal actions of individual men. Often, the abuse could not have been perpetrated without the complicity, the connivance or, at the very least, the lack of concern, of wider society.  

The stories which we have seen in the media in the past years have also shown how complex the matter of “consent” can become.  We have heard abusers defending themselves by saying that their victims “consented” to or even encouraged their advances.  And, at a very superficial level, in some cases there could be some truth in this ‘defence’.  But what exactly counts as “consent”?   Where one of the parties is a minor, or in a vulnerable position, can it ever be present?

My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell’s debut novel,   is unafraid to face these thorny questions head on.  Its protagonist and narrator is the “Vanessa” of the title. As a wide-eyed, fifteen-year-old outsider at college, she is flattered by the attention she receives from her English tutor, Jacob Strane, thirty years her senior.  This attention, however, soon changes into something far creepier, developing into a sexual liaison which will mark and traumatize Vanessa well into adulthood.  As Strane is accused by other ex-students in the wake of #MeToo, Vanessa has to face past horrors head on, and to admit to herself that what she considers the “love affair of her life” is, in reality, a sordid case of manipulation and abuse.  

Russell’s novel is intelligent and nuanced. Whilst it is clear throughout that Strane is an abuser and Vanessa his victim, this is neither a black-and-white account nor a one-sided manifesto.  And the novel is so much the better for this. It  helps, for instance, that Vanessa is not a particularly likeable character and that her negative traits cannot all be blamed on Strane.  This in no way lessens the gravity of the abuse she suffers – on the contrary, the novel shows how the weaknesses of a potential victim can be worked upon by an abuser. Russell also points to the factors which have allowed abusive practices to take place unchecked – from a reluctance of the authorities and family members to admit to inconvenient truths in the hope that they will just “go away”, to the subtle glorification of abusive relationships whether in “high” or popular culture (from literature to pop songs).  At the same time, Russell hints at some ambivalence about #MeToo as a "movement", in the sense that she emphasizes that the history of each victim is different and there is no exclusively "valid" response to trauma.  Trigger warning - some descriptions are explicit and revolting but, then again, the novels subject is not for the squeamish.

Is My Dark Vanessa the great book it is being touted to be? Admittedly, it is neither formally adventurous nor particularly striking in style and language. But it tells a timely and important story and does so effectively, leaving the reader with much food for thought.

Kindle Edition, UK, 400 pages

Published March 10th 2020 by Fourth Estate