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, and as riveting as it is disturbing, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to the heart of some of the most complex issues our age is grappling with.
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I get ready for work and the post has been up for eight hours. 2017
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(@4thEstateBooks, 31 March 2020, 384 pages, hardback, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I bought this book because I read so much hype and glowing reviews it made me want to read the book. This is quite a hard book to read, emotional wise. I got angry reading it. I cried reading it. It upset me so much I wanted to put it aside but I just couldn't stop reading. The hype is understated with this one. In light of the #MeToo movement this book couldn't be more relevant and current. Vanessa is an amazing character. She's complex and real. She's really messed up about what happened with her teacher. For a huge chunk of the book she can't see herself as a victim of abuse, no, they were in love and she consented. The fact is, she was fifteen and he was a teacher in his thirties so it's abuse. One of the saddest lines in the book, near the end that had me howling is when she tells her therapist, while crying I need this to be a love story. The book moves between the present and back to Vanessa's relationship with Mr Strane, showing how he manipulated and groomed her. This is a devastating book.