I’ve been hearing a lot about this book but because of the subject matter, I’ve always been a bit scared to read it. And then it was picked as my book’s club next book.

My Dark Vanessa is the story of Vanessa, from Vanessa’s point of view. Her life at thirty-two isn’t great – she’s working at a hotel instead of fulfilling her writing dream, and she can’t let go of Mr Strane, her ex-English teacher and lover. The book toggles between a fifteen year old Vanessa and thirty two year old Vanessa, exploring her developing relationship/abuse by Strane in the past and the accusations of grooming and sexual abuse against Strane by other students in the present.

As expected, this was a difficult book to read. At first, I couldn’t read more than a chapter or two because of how disturbing it was. As I slowly lengthened my reading sessions, I noticed a constant sense of dread, as though something was physically weighing down on my chest.

Vanessa is such a complex and sometimes frustrating protagonist – her defining trait is that she refuses to see herself as a victim. This, in turn, makes her ignore all the other children that Strane abuses. While I don’t think she is complicit in what happened (personally, I think she was groomed and abused for over ten years by Strane), it’s sometimes hard to pity her because all I wanted to do was to shake her and make her understand that she didn’t ask for it. For most of the book, she is basically stuck in the same cycle of self-blame and it’s heart-breaking.

Overall, this was a hard book to read. I think My Dark Vanessa did a good job looking at the complexities that exist when you are a victim and the various attitudes that one could take. As the book says, this is just one story and I know I should be reading more, but I think it’ll take some time before I’m reading to pick up a similar book.