Russell isn’t obligated to defend herself by saying “This happened to me,” but I worry she will be forced to out herself as a victim as more people flood to criticize the similarities between the two books. They began when she secured her “eye-popping” seven-figure book deal in 2018 and continued through a controversy that resulted in the author “outing” herself as a survivor of sexual abuse—a scenario Russell had hoped to avoid when she set out to write a novel about a vulnerable teenage girl and the man who takes advantage of her. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), Elif Shafak on What It Means to Belong in Many Places at Once, Prince Was One of the Loneliest Souls I've Ever Met, How a Scrap of Papyrus Launched a Reconsideration of Early Christianity. “I wanted a fully-rounded understanding of Vanessa at all times,” Russell says. She would talk about her life and post excerpts of her writing which would later become the novel she’d been working on for the majority of her adult life. It took many years for the novel-in-progress to become a darker portrait of abuse and trauma, a transformation Russell attributes, in large part, to simply growing up. So many smart and magnetic women are spilling their truths, be it in an academic, funny or informative way. Ortiz herself writes in the aforelinked article, “I wonder about an industry that wants to pay seven figures for a fictional book about sexual abuse.” Let me tell you, if I ever manage to condense my feelings surrounding the relationship I had as an adult with the man who taught me from age 14 to 18, I would dress it in fiction too. She’s been open about the parallels between her own life and Vanessa’s, and the accusations led her to a tough decision: In a note posted to her website, she unequivocally revealed to her readers that the story was inspired by her own. The dust-up was but one in a string of headlines for Russell. Why are white women so often the recipients of large advances? Is [it] the horror of a trial, especially knowing how few rapists are actually convicted? My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. Strane killed himself. Many interpretations of Lolita frame it as a love story, and Russell certainly digested it as such as a teenager. Fairly early in the book. “I feel my lips move and static fills my head, white noise so loud I barely hear the sounds my mouth makes or the sounds of Strane—heavy breathing and groans,” she describes. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. This theme of My Dark Vanessa is so crystalline, it’s impossible to comprehend that its own creator was forced to disclose her history with sexual abuse before the novel was published. In one particularly vile phone conversation, Strane asks Vanessa to say, “I love you, daddy." Vanessa’s actions are better understood and empathized within this context. Like, thanks? Ask E. Jean: What's the Key to Confidence. Reality Now Outstrips My Feminist Paranoia. “I think any reaction to Vanessa and her choices are valid, whether people relate to her, empathize with her, or are disappointed and frustrated with her,” she says. He was 42 years old. As Ortiz points out at the start of Excavation, stories of student-teacher relationships are not an anomaly. Books on discovering sexuality, addiction and difficult relationships. In My Dark Vanessa, isolation feels like a curse for the titular character because that distance keeps her removed from her secret life. The book begins with a public accusation; in the opening scene, Vanessa Wye, a 30-something hotel concierge in Portland, Maine, obsessively refreshes a stranger’s Facebook post detailing the abuse she suffered at the hands of a teacher at a nearby boarding school. That there is no perfect victim, no perfect response to sexual abuse, is the crux of Russell’s remarkable work of fiction. “I never read anything that used language the way Lolita does. The literary Internet’s most important stories, every day. The man accused is Jacob Strane, a teacher with whom Vanessa also had a relationship, at the age of 15. Maybe it’s working in a bookshop or the concentrated effort I’ve been making to retreat into a fantasy-bubble when I’m at home, but I’ve found myself excited for new fiction more this year than in previous ones. Does one person have the rights to a story that happens to kids from all walks of life, everywhere? This is no consolation, but I believe this is where any anger should be directed. Her actions, Russell anticipates, will inspire a variety of reader reactions, not all of them understanding. Both are about relationships between adolescent or teenage girls and their older teachers, but Ortiz did not receive a seven-figure advance for Excavation. It’s a story Russell began writing when she was a teenager herself. “[From] reading other texts about sexual abuse and trauma theory, I was able to see this component in the relationship between Vanessa and Strane that I’d been chalking [up] to darkness. Where Are the Unlikeable Female Characters in Young Adult Fiction? What can publishing houses do to increase diversity among its authors and staff? Vanessa’s present is like ours: In the midst of the national reckoning around sexual assault and abuse brought on by the #MeToo movement, she is re-evaluating a relationship she had when she was 15 with her 42-year-old English teacher Jacob Strane. “[Police questioning or a trial] would have only made her psychological trauma that much worse.”. Are they similar? Whilst a novel isn’t a call to action, a raising of awareness, in the same way a memoir can achieve, My Dark Vanessa will help people process their own similar or adjacent experiences. Spoilers for My Dark Vanessa below. “It was always clear to me that Vanessa would never have been able to open up to anyone—her therapist, Taylor, her mother—so long as Strane was still there. Not so. Justice takes a backseat to healing when Strane, the white-hot star around which Vanessa orbits, unexpectedly dies midway through the novel—before facing any substantial professional or legal repercussions.