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A most anticipated book by New York Times • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Marie Claire • Bustle • BuzzFeed • Newsweek • New York Post • Esquire • The Millions • Salon • Real Simple • O Magazine • Sunday Times • Observer • Stylist • Cosmopolitan UK
Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager-and who professed to worship only her-may be far different from what she has always believed?
Alternating between Vanessa's present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.
praise
“Clever, unsettling. . . . One of the more radical aspects of the novel is that it maintains its ambiguities, it refuses to give up entirely on the idea that there was love somewhere in this encounter, along with other sicker, darker things. . . . It is difficult to write about this subject without falling into predictable tropes or clichés, but Russell manages a brutal originality. In an era of neat furious accounts of victimhood, this novel stands out for elusiveness, its exceedingly complex, inventive, resourceful examination of harm and power.” — New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“Russell manages to weave beautiful prose with gut-wrenching truth. . . To call this book a ‘conversation piece’ or ‘an important book’ feels belittling . . . this book is so much more than that. It’s a lightning rod. A brilliantly crafted novel, one that will stand against any of the celebrated tomes glorifying the over-sexualization of girls.” — Washington Post
“My Dark Vanessa is a hard story to read and a harder one to put down. . . . A well-constructed package of dynamite.” — Stephen King
“Exquisite. . . . My Dark Vanessa stands on its own as simultaneously specific and universal—about a young woman who believes she’s in a love story when she’s actually in a psychological horror film.” — Los Angeles Times
“A brilliant and stunning debut, My Dark Vanessa is utterly truth-rattling, humane in its clarity, and chilling in its resonance. An absolute must-read.” — Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl
“This timely, riveting debut illuminates the interplay between a child’s heartbreaking confusion and the deepest perversions of power.” — People, Book of the Week
“My Dark Vanessa is a singular achievement—a masterpiece of tension and tone that will simultaneously grip you, horrify you, and move you. . . . With utmost sensitivity and vivid, gut-churning detail, Russell illuminates Vanessa’s struggle to see the story of her life for the tragedy it truly is. Before you start My Dark Vanessa, clear your schedule for the next few days—this . . . will utterly consume you.” — Esquire
“Subtle, powerful, and timely, it is an exploration of what it means to be mis-sold your own life, to have your story about yourself overwritten. It takes a grip on the reader and never lets go.” — Hilary Mantel, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Wolf Hall trilogy
“Perhaps the most anticipated first novel of the year, Russell’s riveting, timeline-shifting saga of the relationship between a high-school student and her teacher . . . is sure to spark conversation (and debate).” — Entertainment Weekly
“Explosive. . . . A significant addition to the necessary reassessments and conversations sparked by the #MeToo movement.” — NPR
“Gripping and unsettling . . . a bracingly uncompromising book. It will doubtless be devoured with an ache of recognition by large numbers of women. But it really ought to be read by men.” — The Economist
“My Dark Vanessa destroyed me. This moving, ferocious story of an all-consuming relationship between a teenager and her teacher traces not just a stolen girlhood, but the aftershocks that haunt trauma survivors years into the future. Gripping, stunningly written, and important. . . . I’ve been waiting for this book.” — Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
“As powerful as it is painful, and deserves its reputation as one of the defining books of the #MeToo era.” — Vogue
“Uncanny and chilling. . . . That there is no perfect victim, no perfect response to sexual abuse, is the crux of Russell’s remarkable work of fiction.” — Elle
“My Dark Vanessa is a harrowing triumph. Complex, smart, and utterly riveting from start to finish, Kate Elizabeth Russell’s debut novel cracks open assumptions and clichés, and delivers a layered, nuanced narrative that is vital for a more thorough understanding of the extent and longevity of the damage wrought by sexual abuse. Be prepared for a pit in your stomach, a lump in your throat, and reading late into the night.” — Lily King, bestselling author of Euphoria
“My Dark Vanessa is an unsettling and thought-provoking marvel. I was captivated by the brutal honesty of the emotion and the stark beauty of the writing. This one will stay with me forever.” — Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of Summer of ’69
“My Dark Vanessa succeeds—and is a triumph—because its aim is to illuminate one woman’s experience of sexual abuse in all of its emotional nuance and complexity. . . . Almost impossible to put down. . . . This is a landscape I’ve never seen fully rendered in literature before—an essential, still largely misunderstood aspect of human experience that comes to blazing life in Russell’s hands and, frankly, serves as a potent singlehanded response to anyone who questions the relevance of fiction in today’s reality-obsessed society. . . Russell’s done something new here.” — Women’s Review of Books
“A truly remarkable debut, deeply thoughtful, deeply emotional, compelling and disturbing in equal measure. I raced to the ending and then found the book lingered with me long after that last page. It is lingering still.” — Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“It’s a page-turner studded with speed bumps that force readers to pause and reckon with two opposing narratives: Vanessa falling in love and Vanessa being exploited by a pedophile. It’s a powerful juxtaposition to be submerged into a romance and jolted back to the reality of abuse, knowing both versions of the story have truth.” — HuffPost
“My Dark Vanessa is a total masterpiece of tone and point of view, even more impressive for how uninvested it seems in impressing us. It’s fascinating and devastating and brilliant. I loved it.” — Kristen Roupenian, bestselling author of You Know You Want This: “Cat Person” and Other Stories
“This isn’t your cliché trope about a high school student-teacher relationship. Kate Elizabeth Russell brings forth all of the emotion and complexity.” — Marie Claire
“Taboo-shattering. . . . A daring and deeply unsettling exploration of love, sex, loyalty, and manipulation, written in stunning prose and offering few easy answers.” — Interview magazine
“Calling My Dark Vanessa, the electrifying debut of Maine native Kate Elizabeth Russell, ‘a #MeToo novel’—as it surely will be tagged—would not be wrong, exactly. But it would be an incomplete assessment of a book that feels both necessary for this exact cultural moment and decades in the making. . . . This is not a story about one bad man and a girl he harmed, but rather an entire system that perpetuates these damning cycles because of whose perspective must be privileged in order for the whole structure to remain standing.” — Salon
“Who is to say who is a victim? My Dark Vanessa explores the sexually charged shadow world between desire and interruption, girlhood and womanhood, coercion and complicity. It’s breathtakingly suspenseful, like downing a flaming drink without blowing it out.” — Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and The Revolution of Marina M.
“Instantly provocative . . . one of the splashier literary debuts of the year. . . . [Vanessa’s account] flips disconcertingly between the rote patter of a cult victim and flashes of acute insight. . . . My Dark Vanessa is a minefield in which language itself has been weaponized. Vanessa is both a smothering presence and a troubling void, a narrator who often feels disassociated from her own story.” — The Atlantic
“Lyrical and propulsive . . . bold and unexpected.” — Vulture
“What’s so difficult about this book is the fact that we see so intimately the manipulative tactics a grown man used on an insecure teenager, but also that the novel doesn’t shy away from the idea that Vanessa loved this man and that he fundamentally changed her as a person. It’s not an easy read, but it’s definitely a worthy one.” — Glamour
“Explosive and timely.” — theSkimm, Skimm Reads Pick
“Chilling, addictive . . . a compelling read, sure to spur endless discussions.” — Chicago Tribune
“Kate Elizabeth Russell’s absorbing and disturbing debut novel nails what it might be like to be fifteen, desperate to feel seen and to matter—and then, with devastating realism and pacing, to be groomed and raped by a predator. . . . My Dark Vanessa provides visceral nuance to the consent conversation as well as an effective contemporary response to Lolita. . . . Vanessa feels deeply real in a way that’s impossible to shake. I hope she’s doing OK.” — Audible
“A must-read for the #MeToo era.” — Good Housekeeping
“Gripping . . . heartbreaking and relevant. . . . A critical and timeless examination of the ways that the sexuality of young women can be dismissed, exploited or demonized.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“My Dark Vanessa has extraordinary ambitions. . . . Score one for the #MeToo movement; this is among the best crime fiction to emerge steeped in those issues, from consent to grooming to what counts as sexual assault.” — CrimeReads
“In the age of #MeToo, Russell’s blistering, deeply uncomfortable, and utterly essential debut achieves required-reading status.” — Harper’s Bazaar
“A deep look at power, abuse, and victimhood. . . . Russell’s immersive talent makes answering that question one of the most compelling, disturbing, and complex reads this year.” — Shondaland
“A nuanced analysis of trauma, power, and obsession that’s, at times, hard to read; more often, it’s hard to put down.” — Vice
“A carefully and masterfully crafted piece of fiction, an early-aughts time capsule, and a focused practice in perspective. . . . An impressive debut from an author who will no doubt continue to prove her talent.” — InStyle
“There’s nothing easy about Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa, but it’s an important book that is unflinching in its story of a woman coming to terms with her sexual assault.” — PopSugar
“Gripping . . . cleverly handled. . . . These perspectives from victims bring an important truth into focus, one that makes this novel valuable: that the damage is not simply in the act itself, but in the way it can forever distort a person’s sense of what is north and what is south, what is right and what is wrong, and what they do or don’t deserve to suffer.” — The Times
“Absolutely gripping. . . . Written in the first person without hindsight, it’s a brilliant depiction of how grooming feels from the inside. . . . A darkly compelling story.” — The Guardian
“My Dark Vanessa does something that only slow, patient fiction can achieve: it gives voice to doubt. . . . Russell shows us not only a woman’s combat with a predatory world, but with her own mind. She also explores, with great sensitivity and nuance, a survivor’s struggle with the duty to speak.” — Times Literary Supplement
“Russell weaves Vanessa’s memories of high school together with the social media–saturated callout culture of the present moment, as Vanessa struggles to determine whether the love story she has told about herself is, in fact, a tragedy of unthinkable proportions. Russell’s debut is a rich psychological study of the aftermath of abuse . . . [and] a devastating cultural portrait of enablement and the harm we allow young women to shoulder. ‘The excuses we make for them are outrageous,’ Vanessa concludes about abusive men, ‘but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.’ A gut-wrenching debut.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“My Dark Vanessa deals with power, truth, and the identity of a woman trying to reclaim a sense of self after sexual trauma. It packs a punch and will unearth difficult feelings in the reader . . . asking who owns the right to feel indignant, how we re-paint victims who have already been painted by their experience. A sharp debut that tunnels through you.” — Irish Times
“A compelling, unsettling debut novel. . . . My Dark Vanessa is a nuanced and psychologically complex novel, brilliantly capturing Vanessa’s wavering emotions as the implications of Strane’s sexually predatory actions take hold and she begins to grasp the full extent of the damage done to her. Chilling and powerful.” — S Magazine, Sunday Express
“My Dark Vanessa unfolds with devastating power and psychological nuance, and is by far the best novel to emerge in the wake of #MeToo. . . . A disturbing, sophisticated novel that everyone should read.” — Sydney Morning Herald
