My Dark Vanessa
By Kate Elizabeth Russell
"2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?"
My Dark Vanessa has been popping up all over social media and has a ton of high ratings on Goodreads and yet if you ask anyone if they enjoyed the book a large number say no. I fall into that category as well. No, I did not enjoy this book, but the attention it brings to important topics is crucial. Whether you've already read it or you're considering picking it up, let's start by making a comforting drink.
"At breakfast I drink black tea while perched at the end of a long Shaker-style table, my stomach too knotted to eat."
No recipe needed, just a warm cup of black tea, which is nice because our snack is quite a bit more hands-on.
At the private school Vanessa attends advisors host monthly dinners to give students feedback and answer questions. At the end of her first meeting her advisor passes around a tin of homemade doughnut holes with cherry filling. "These are pampushky," she says. "Ukrainian, like my mother."
A lot of the pampushky recipes I came across were for a savory garlic bread, which looks delicious, but is not the Ukrainian doughnut mentioned in My Dark Vanessa. I ended up following this recipe from Epicurus except I filled mine with cherry jelly instead of the rose preserves. As I hinted at above, these require a fair amount of effort. There's the making of the dough, the double rise (triple if you include the rise after you shape the doughnuts), the assembly, and the frying.
A word of caution, do not try to cut out all of your circles first and then pinch them together after you put the filling on one half. No matter how well you pinch the two sides together, they pop open while frying... ask me how I know!
All in all the pampushky were good, but if you can find them in the store or you can get someone else to make them for you, I won't blame you in the slightest!
My Dark Vanessa: Unrated
I tend to rate books on my personal enjoyment rather than how well they were written or the importance of the subject matter so if I were to rate this book it would be a 1★ review because I absolutely did not enjoy it. It took me forever to finish and I had to put it down several times and read some lighter books before I could continue. It's unsettling and graphic, but I also think it will shed some light on predatory behaviors and perhaps even bring about some much needed discussions.
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