My Dark Vanessa is a literary fiction book by author Kate Elizabeth Russell.
The New York Times’ most anticipated book.
The relationship between an innocent but precocious teenage girl and her charismatic and charismatic mentor.
2000. Smart, ambitious and yearning to grow up, 15-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her manly and deceitful 42-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid a growing wave of accusations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student who reached out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself faced with an impossible choice: Remain silent, steadfast in her belief that her teenage self is willing to commit to this relationship, or redefine herself and her past events. How could Vanessa turn down her first love, the man who had fundamentally changed her and was forever present in her life? Could it be that the man she fell in love with as a teenager – and the one who claimed to only worship her – could be far from what she always believed in?
My Dark Vanessa intersperses memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her body can hold. This is a portrait of a troubled adolescence and its consequences that raise important questions about self-determination, consent, complicity, and victimhood. My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the changing cultural practices that are transforming our relationships and society itself.
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My Dark Vanessa
- A Novel
