My Dark Vanessa: A Novel

Amazon.com Review\nAn Amazon Best Book of March 2020: My Dark Vanessa is an exploration of the repercussions of a March/December relationship between a teacher and his student. Vanessa is contacted by a woman who is about to go public with a story of sexual abuse at the hands of an English teacher, Jacob Strane, when she was a high school student. She has heard some stories about Vanessa and Strane, and wants to know if Vanessa has a story similar to her own. And Vanessa does indeed have a story about Strane, but in her mind the story is about her first love and their all-consuming passion. And it’s the story of how that passion has reverberated through the years since, arresting Vanessa at the point in her life when Strane assured her she was the love of his. Can a teacher have had two teenage loves of his life? Or does Vanessa need to acknowledge that there’s another name for the role Strane plays in her memory? Masterfully switching between present-day and past, Vanessa starts to look at their relationship through the lens of the #MeToo moment, raising uncomfortable questions about consent, agency, abuse, manipulation and memory in this provocative and riveting novel. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review\nINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER\n“[An] exceedingly complex, inventive, resourceful examination of harm and power.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“A lightning rod . . . brilliantly crafted.”—The Washington Post
A most anticipated book by The New York Times • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Marie Claire • Elle • Harper's Bazaar • Bustle • Newsweek • New York Post • Esquire • Real Simple • The Sunday Times • The Guardian
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.