I love books that ask the reader to explore the psychodynamics of relationships where significant stresses are placed on people; they adapt, respond, and pressures mount. It’s what makes well-written true crime books fascinating, like I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, and memoirs of endurance, like Unbroken. We ask: why did they do this? Why would someone make that choice? What were they thinking? Why would you do that to someone, and think it was okay? Having made a series of bad choices, how do you rise to normalcy, even happiness in life again? These are all the questions you’ll ask when reading My Dark Vanessa, a novel to be sure, but very true to human nature.

Here are the basics: Vanessa Wye seeks to escape her mundane life with her parents in their upper working class life in rural Maine, and thinks boarding school is the answer. She is bright enough to get in on scholarship, but feels insecure when surrounded by wealthy students from families with high expectations for their performance. She feels isolated, unconfident; she really doesn’t know herself or her ambitions yet, like most fifteen year olds. Those around her are mostly living out the ambitions forced on them by parents—they are only secure in that they have always felt entitled, as their parents do. Enter Jacob Strane, freshman honors English teacher. This happens to be the class where Vanessa shines, her personal strength in writing and interpretation. Strane, middle aged, Harvard educated, he comes from a hard working class background, where there may have been some form of abuse (doesn’t abuse often beget abusers?) He sees Vanessa’s vulnerabilities, and plays to them, flattering, grooming, pressuring. He gives her Lolita, Pale Fire, Plath, St. Vincent Millay, both flattering and providing models for what he hopes to achieve. He artfully empowers her, challenges her, is vulnerable with her, makes her believe he sees her true amazing self. In essence, he tells her everything she could hope to hear to feel secure, valued, appreciated, understood, and loved.

The trade off is simple; for all of that emotional crack, she serves up her body. Strane even makes her believe that she is an exceptionally mature and hungry sexual being, requiring pleasure and giving pleasure beyond that of her peers. Russell describes the traumatic splintering that occurs, when the present moment is intolerable, beyond our control, when the mind removes from the body and goes to a calm, safe place. She also describes how trauma intrudes in the commonplace, when the persons associated with trauma are superimposed on others, or one hallucinates and sees the dreaded figures in other situations. Vanessa identifies so strongly with the persona Strane creates for her, that to reinterpret that, to think of that relationship in a different way, would be to tear down everything she thinks of herself, an uprooting she doesn’t think she could survive. She feels damaged beyond repair.

The plot line alternates between 2000, when the encounters begin, to 2017, when Vanessa in her early thirties is dealing with the fallout, working a non-demanding job when she can’t make herself pursue her vocation, drinking and smoking pot just to get through the day and night, unable to form healthy relationships, still obsessed with Strane, unable to let go. It is all she knew, and despite its unhealthy, self-destructive nature, she cannot let go. Russell’s resolution feels right, not contrived. She handles the plot device well, and most characters are fully formed and believable. Strane is not depicted as a monster, and Vanessa doesn’t feel like a helpless victim. The ambiguity is essential, since we are independent actors, feel responsible for our choices, and aren’t always aware of how we are being manipulated.

I think you’ll gain new insights into this #MeToo moment we are experiencing. This novel enters the culture at a perfect moment, helping us to ask more questions about how these abuses happen, and what people need to avoid being victimized. Also, and importantly, what motivates those who manipulate and victimize others, and how that can be avoided.