![]() In the hands of a less skilled author, it could seem like a gimmick to mention Lolita so overtly. In flashbacks, Strane woos a young Vanessa with a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, the notorious story about Humbert Humbert’s infatuation with the child Dolores Haze. To fully understand her, you have to see how this relationship started, and you have to see through the long-standing consequences of it.” ![]() “I didn't want the reader to get too comfortable in depictions of her as a teenager, or too comfortable in depictions of her as a 30-something, because her psychology at both ages is different. “I wanted a fully-rounded understanding of Vanessa at all times,” Russell says. Written entirely in the first person, My Dark Vanessa jumps between the present, where adult Vanessa is still in contact with Strane, and the past, where teenage Vanessa is one of Strane’s English students. By the end of chapter one, readers will feel their frustration building like a migraine, a pulsing at the temples that gets louder and more insistent as the story progresses. ![]() After all, what is there to say? As far as Vanessa’s concerned, their relationship was consensual. Instead, she answers a distressed phone call from Strane and assures him she won’t come forward. ![]() Readers might assume that in witnessing the stranger’s account of abuse, Vanessa would be compelled to share her own similar experience. ![]()
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