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Novel set in MAINE (a riveting read for the #MeToo movement)

12th June 2020

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, novel set in Maine.

Novel set in MAINE

This is an unsettling novel, and it’s one that I suspect will stay with me a while after turning the final page.

A 42 year-old English teacher at an American High School grooms, and then has sex with, a 15 year-old student. There can be no doubt, can there…he’s committed a terrible crime; the poor, innocent young girl has been horribly abused; he has to go to prison.

But is it all really that simple….?

Kate Elizabeth Russell’s debut novel is a powerful story that is destined to fill many column inches, and cause heated discussions between book club members around the world. Because the relationship between Vanessa Wye and Jacob Strane is far from being one-dimensional.

Told in twin timelines, we flick backwards and forwards from 32 year-old Vanessa – working in a dead-end job at a hotel, drinking too much, taking drugs and hooking up with older men – to the teenage schoolgirl at a Maine boarding school.

Vanessa’s life has clearly been damaged, yet even when – in the eye of the #MeToo shit-storm – another of Mr Strane’s pupils accuses him of abuse, Vanessa refuses to condemn Jacob:

Think about it,’ I say. ‘If a normal man pats a girl on the knee, no big deal. But if a man who’s been accused of being a pedophile does it? People are going to react disproportionately. So, no, I’m not mad at him. I’m mad at them. I’m mad at the world that turned him into a monster when all he did was have the bad luck of falling in love with me.’

My Dark Vanessa is not a comfortable book to read. I thought I’d start to lose interest after the first 100 pages, but the story is so nuanced, the writing so powerful and the themes so important, that it was a compelling literary experience until the painful end.

For lovers of TripFiction, the Maine setting is well portrayed – the posh boarding school of Browick, Atlantica College on the Maine coast and Portland, where Vanessa ends up working as a hotel concierge. But the settings are not as integral to the book as the underlying story, and in this case perhaps the time has more relevance than the location. The world is a very different place in 2000, when 15 year-old Vanessa first sits in Mr Strane’s class and he notices her ‘maple leaf‘ red hair, than it is in 2017, when other students beging to tell their stories.

Highly recommended, and all the more shocking for reading the author’s acknowledgements at the end of the book, and for understanding that the story had an 18 year gestation period:

‘A special thank you to the brilliant poet, chosen sister, and best writer I know, Eva Della Lana, who has been a constant source of inspiration and reassurance throughout our friendship. That we met as two teenage girls traveling our own dark landscapes and both made it out alive with our voices, genius, and hearts intact – can you believe how remarkable that is, Eva, how profoundly rare?’

Andrew for the TripFiction Team

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