Ever read a book that made you question everything? Yep. This is the one for me. It was dark, emotional, and so real despite being a fictional work of art inspired by the authors teenage experiences with older men. My Dark Vanessa hit so close to home with my own personal experiences, and reminded me that some of us have parts of ourselves that live in the shadows for a reason.
Millenial here - who grew up in the era of AOL chat rooms and Buffy <3 Angel. It always felt like relationships with older men was quite normal and expected almost. My own parents were 6 years apart, and growing up others in their circle sported even larger age gaps. History doesn’t do much to contradict this narrative when younger women were often married off to older men like chattel really. Nowadays, even after the #metoo movement and despite Gen Z’s best efforts to quell age gaps, some of our most popular books, movies, and music push the same narrative - enter ACOTAR’s Feyre and Rhysand (ACOMAF is better though!). I myself have been in a relationship with someone nearly 10 years my senior for several years. Early on, our age difference was startling enough that once on vacation a Vegas store clerk asked for my ID at checkout, then quietly asked if I was ok and there of my own volition. We laughed about it then - now it’s just ammunition for me to rib him about being older. He doesn’t mind, especially since he knows that I’m tiny and sometimes look like a toddler next to him. The point I’m trying to make is - despite how normalized it felt growing up and does now, when I read this book I was involuntary forced to re-examine relationships from long ago. Not unlike Vanessa, relationships with older men in those youthful years. Even those that don’t involve an authority figure or 30+ year gap or anything egregious can still feel dubious when re-examined with a new lens. Looking back at those moments, when you thought you were in control. Choosing who to be with, what happened, and for how long, but did you ever really have control then?
My Dark Vanessa bounces back and forth between adult Vanessa (now) and 15 year old Vanessa (past) as it explores her memories of the relationship she had with her 42 year old English teacher, Mr. Jacob Strane. She struggles to process how her relationship started and ended amidst recent allegations against Mr. Strane for sexual abuse of another former student. It is tough as an outsider to see her student/teacher relationship slowly evolve into something more with a few cleverly placed words from him. It is harder to see her realize that it may not have been this romanticized version of events that she’s been peddling to herself. The realization left her more lost than ever, and his hold on her as an adult is downright eerie up until the end.
When I read My Dark Vanessa, it made me question everything about those days. Reading how Mr. Strane manipulated and groomed Vanessa was eye-opening because 20 years later she was still sure she wanted it. She’d made every choice willingly. But we know it wasn’t true. There is a specific example on pages 72-76 of the book, where Mr. Strane challenges his class to consider a poem from a different perspective, a sexual one. They are all pretty scandalized. Vanessa works hard to keep her cool to seem mature, and Mr. Strane takes the opportunity to challenge her further when they’re alone during Creative Writing to read Lolita. In the pages that follow, she spends her time devouring the novel drawing parallels between her and Mr. Strane to Lo and Humbert. Her conclusion on the matter ended like as such,
“I lie in bed and flip through Lolita until I find the line I’m looking for on page 17. Humbert describing the qualities of the nymphet hidden among ordinary girls, ‘she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.’ I have power. Power to make it happen. Power over him. I was an idiot for not realizing this sooner.”
Lolita is NOT the poster child for a love story. If you’ve read it, you know that it is written in what I always perceived as the mind of a pedophile that excused his own tendencies since he was a young man until the time of his death. She tried to escape. They weren’t kept apart. It was a vulnerable moment for Vanessa that Mr. Strane took to manipulate her and groom her into thinking theirs was too an epic, forbidden love story to gain the favor he wanted from her. It is hard to think clearly when you’re in the thick of it. Her power was never her own. Worst of all, she was a mess of an adult because he continued to be present in her life. He no longer sought her for his own desire, she was too old of course, but rather to keep her in line and feel validated by her devotion. The whole situation is rather unsavory, but the book really makes you stop and think and analyze and re-analyze what you thought you knew. Relationships are hard enough for adults. It is doubly so for teenagers because they’re still developing a sense of self and place an undue amount of weight on what other people think about them. This book highlights not only how relationships can turn toxic on many levels, but most importantly how a developing brain can be manipulated so easily.
FUN FACT: The only reason I found this book was because a reading challenge I was doing a few years back asked for a book with your (my) name in the title.
If you haven’t read My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, I highly recommend it. Check trigger warnings though because it is a tough one, but written so well. If you haven’t read the classic Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, I suggest you do too. It is an interesting read. I won’t say much other than I’ll let you decide what you think about the narrator, and that I had literal visceral reactions while I read it. Eek!