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A Review: My Dark Vanessa by Elizabeth Kate Russell

My Dark Vanessa is a beautiful first-person narrative about the effects of child exploitation, trauma, and abusive cycles. Unlike other popular novels (yes, I’m pointing fingers at you, Ms. Colleen Hoover) that take on the responsibility of writing a story that surrounds abuse, but instead tread on the border of romanticization, Russell carefully and accurately writes about the abusive cycle that many people fall victim to after being taken advantage of.

Our narrator, Vanessa, is genuine throughout the story. Whether she’s “good” or “bad” is up to debate for the reader, but she’s written so that it’s hard to like her at times. “Why would she do that?”, “Is she crazy?”, and “She can not be serious right now…” are some of the things I would say to myself as I followed Vanessa’s narration.

In other stories that are about similar topics, I find that authors often take the easy route in characterizing the protagonist in that they completely victimize them so that readers are given no autonomy to make their own opinions about them. If the author intentionally victimizes and creates a sob story of the protagonist, readers will obviously interpret them that way.

Victim Blaming

Vanessa, while it’s clear that all her actions are caused by the years of trauma Strane had put her through, is sometimes unbearable. At times, she acknowledges the abuse she has undergone, but most of the story is her defending Strane and blaming her self-destructive habits entirely on herself.

While it’s understandable to feel annoyed and even angry by Vanessa’s reasoning, it brought me back to reality and pinpointed flaws within my own reasoning. It’s easy to call Vanessa nonsensical, but it’s important to keep in mind that she was manipulated and gaslit from childhood to adulthood. She also bears the weight of Strane’s suicide and ultimately blames herself for it. So while at times, Vanessa comes off as extremely unlikeable, My Dark Vanessa is a great wake-up call for those that find themselves falling into the victim-blaming mindset, whether intentionally or not.

I give this book a 3.5 star rating for its excellent, artistic take on sexual abuse and pedophilia while still respecting the matters, however, something is missing for me. The ending seems almost empty and unsatisfactory. While it can be argued that the ending took the more realistic route in that not everything has a great ending, it would have been nice to end with a sense of closure or genuine justice.