

Vanessa covers for Strane and leaves Browick at the conclusion of her sophomore year in shame after suspicions of her relationship with Strane surface among the Browick student community. Vanessa finds his age and requirements repulsive at times, but the power he wields over her is something she has never known. She is, however, conflicted about Strane. Vanessa gets a false sense of autonomy from his emotional openness and vulnerability, which she lacks in other parts of her life. Strane, a keen observer of human nature and a seasoned predator with a fondness for young, bright, fragile female students, connects with Vanessa, a gifted poet, through literature. She is a scholarship student, which adds to her sense of being an outsider, and she has trouble forming relationships with her peers and her parents. Beginning with her sophomore year at Browick, readers accompany the younger Vanessa through the rigors of boarding school life. The narrative alternates between occurrences in 2017 and those in Vanessa’s younger years, from 2000 to 2006. Vanessa believes that their relationship is the most meaningful, intense love affair she has ever had as an adult yet, at the end of the story, she realizes that it was violent and that she, like Taylor Birch, was a victim of sexual assault.

Strane, Vanessa’s 42-year-old English instructor, had been Vanessa’s English teacher for seventeen years. Vanessa tackles the prospect that she has more in common with Taylor Birch than she is comfortable acknowledging with the help of her therapist. Strane commits himself a few months after this talk, unable to cope with the public exposure that comes with other accusers coming forward. Strane states that his employer, Browick High School in Norumbega, Maine, is reopening an investigation into Strane’s relationship with Taylor Birch, a former student who has accused Strane of sexual assault. During a break, she receives a call from a man named Jacob Strane on her cell phone.

Vanessa eventually makes her way to a hotel lobby in Portland, Maine, where she works at the concierge desk. Summary of My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth PDFĪs she gets ready for work in 2017, 30-year-old Vanessa Wye updates her Facebook page over and over again.
