Everything wrong with My Dark Vanessa

I have read quite a lot of disturbing novels in the past, but one book I read as of late just took the cake. It is called My Dark Vanessa, which is set in both the early 2000s and 2017, the latter being when the #MeToo movement came to fruition. It follows a 15-year-old girl named Vanessa Wye who has an affair with her 42-year-old English teacher Mr. Jacob Strane only for him to get accused of sexual assault by another student years later. As Vanessa comes of age, the more she realizes that Mr. Strane is not exactly the man she first fell in love with. The timeline alternates between 2000 and 2017, as we see all the events leading up to Mr. Strane’s downfall as well as more of Vanessa questioning her faith in him. There are numerous references to Lolita throughout the novel, due to the parallels of creepy men falling in love with (or more appropriately, preying on) young and innocent girls. While this may be one of the best books I have ever read, it may also be one of the worst.

The book glamorizes pedophilia, especially through the eyes of the protagonist, Vanessa, whose point of view the story is told from. She is an outsider who keeps to herself a lot, passive and “not like other girls.” While most girls her age are dealing with the awkwardness of young love, she willingly throws herself at a man nearly 30 years her senior simply because she loves the thrill of doing something illegal that has major repercussions for both of them. It would have been more interesting if Mr. Strane had a wife and kids but the whole “married man cheats on his loving wife with a younger and prettier woman” trope is overused, so him seducing Vanessa can be just a teeny bit more understandable to make up for the fact that he is lonely, at least from his perspective, but it still does not excuse him flirting with an underage girl.

While both Vanessa and Mr. Strane attempt to keep their affair clandestine, everyone else ends up finding out, needless to say. The entire student body and school board threaten to expose Mr. Strane and have him fired but Vanessa takes the blame and admits that it was her fault for coming onto him, forcing her to switch schools. Even at her new school, the rumors that Vanessa slept with her teacher spread like wildfire. She tries hooking up with both much older men and even boys her own age but to her, they lack the spark that she had with Mr. Strane. But it’s only when she does reunite with him that she starts to realize he is not the man she thought he was. Word has been going around that he has sexually assaulted another female student, but he brushes it off as a simple gesture of affection towards the girl. However, this all comes back to bite him several years later, as the allegations make headlines due to the #MeToo movement being in full force. SPOILER ALERT: Rather than fess up to his big mistake, turn himself in to the authorities, and accept his reputation being besmirched, he ultimately ends his life by jumping off a bridge and drowning, causing Vanessa to guilt-trip herself over his death.

Vanessa is not a protagonist you can easily sympathize with. She grew up with stable, normal parents and does not appear to have any “daddy issues” that would make her attracted to a man old enough to be her dad, to the point where she would see him as a replacement father figure. She is an only child, so you can imagine how boring it must be for her to grow up without siblings, but she hardly tries to make any real friends. She did have a former best friend she was initially desperate to make amends with but turned against her the moment she warned her about Mr. Strane’s ulterior motives. She did make two new friends at her new school but they were not very good influences and she’s back to fantasizing over Mr. Strane the moment she leaves them. In college, she had a roommate but does not even bother to hide the salacious details of her May-December romance from her. Any chance she gets to make friends, she throws them under the bus for Mr. Strane. In fact, Vanessa as a character barely changes throughout the story, even when she’s well into her 30s, still hung up on her teenage May-December tryst. Luckily, she manages to find herself a therapist in adulthood but all she could ever talk about is Mr. Strane and even after he dies she does not see him for the monster he really is but continues to excuse his pedophilia. When she finally meets with his accuser, she doesn’t even bother to sympathize with the younger woman. Her parents did all they could to convince her how morally wrong her affair was but they just did not show enough tough love to her and get her to a shrink sooner.

Now moving on to Mr. Strane. He is a single, middle-aged man who has somehow decided against having a wife and children. But why the need to go after a student? Even if the #MeToo movement wasn’t even a thing back in the early aughts, he should have known the effect that would have on his career. He seems to have taken advantage of the young Vanessa’s loneliness just like how she took advantage of his, despite the glaringly obvious age gap, which makes them perfect for each other. He singles her out right in front of other students. He becomes a sulking mess the moment she leaves. When he does reunite with her when she is legal, he becomes even more of a creep, coming onto his future accuser. Then when the allegations against him are made public, he begs her to believe his innocence. She is skeptical, so he is driven to suicide. I don’t believe that his behavior needs further explanation.

I get that everyone will have their opinions on this book and I know my views on it may seem a bit blown out of proportion. It is a very well-written novel that does a good job exploring Vanessa’s thoughts and while the characters may be morally ambiguous, they reflect most real-life people: making decisions we know are stupid but we still act upon them anyway because we get some sort of excitement out of it, so I’ll give the author credit for that. But glamorizing pedophilia is not okay at all. I know some young women go for much older men because they don’t like dealing with the immaturity of younger men, I can understand that but what exactly would you have in common with a SO old enough to be your dad? To each their own, but it still fazes me.