My Dark Vanessa

Kate Elizabeth Russell

Mar 2020 · Fourth Estate · Narrated by Grace Gummer

5.0

3 reviews

Audiobook

15 hr 33 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

An instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 DYLAN THOMAS AWARD

'A package of dynamite' Stephen King

‘Powerful, compulsive, brilliant’ Marian Keyes

An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher

ALL HE DID WAS FALL IN LOVE WITH ME AND THE WORLD TURNED HIM INTO A MONSTER

Vanessa Wye was fifteen-years-old when she first had sex with her English teacher.

She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student.

Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn't abuse. It was love. She's sure of that.

Forced to rethink her past, to revisit everything that happened, Vanessa has to redefine the great love story of her life – her great sexual awakening – as rape. Now she must deal with the possibility that she might be a victim, and just one of many.

Nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and powerful, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to the heart of some of the most complex issues of our age.

Ratings and reviews

5.0

3 reviews

Shivangi Singh

5 June 2022

It was both very hard to read and yet it was very hard to put it down. It ripped my heart open with its realness and how authenticly the challenges of a young kid being abused was described. It's hard to understand the complexity of these thing if it's not happening to you and specially if you see it through an adult lense. But this book gives such a painfully true insight on what it's like when you are a child and how hard it is to recognise abuse. Also the way the author was able to dipict that worst part about the abuse is not only the abuse it self but the imbalance in creates in ones mind, how it adulterates the surviours perspective how they unfairly carry the guilt and shame that was never theirs to begin with. One of the reason why so many people suffer isn't just because bad people exists but how we and society fail to provide an healing environment. Its an important book to be read, cause if more people understood more people would be kind. This book is truly is very special.

About the author

Kate Elizabeth Russell is originally from eastern Maine. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Kansas and an MFA from Indiana University. My Dark Vanessa is her first novel.

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