Krishna
This is a debut book of the author and is wildly popular. 
Vanessa works on the tour information desk in a hotel in Maine. Her brother calls her by phone and she is relieved that he had not decided on self harm after what happened.
Vanessa seems to have had relationship with a much older teacher and she does not understand why all the fuss about the woman being exploited by men.
The story shifts back to her dorm room in the past in the college where she is trying to make friends. She meets and is attracted to a much older professor, Mr Strane, who teacher her English Literature.
I don’t know if it was intended but the way Strane behaves with Vanessa right from the beginning is downright creepy. The story is told from Vanessa’s point of view and so we see only the attraction in the words as told but the flow of the story makes you uncomfortable all the way through. This is a mark of good storytelling, in my opinion.
It keeps going forward in this fashion. The girl is definitely infatuated with Strane and tells the story from that point of view.
Vanessa seems to respond and even egg him on, when he is a bit hesitant. It is creepy to read. Yes, he is a lecherous old man as he himself says, and in the beginning, we learn that Strane also had relationship with another student and was accused of rape but Vanessa seems to have flirted with him and openly suggested that she is interested. (Not that it excuses anything but it is sort of creepy to read and not the usual treatment of such subjects in a story on this subject).
They have regular sex and Vanessa seems not to care about the increasing gossip in school. When Strane becomes increasingly brazen, the school children notice. A complaint is filed by a girl’s father who is also a trustee but both Vanessa and Strane deny the charges vigorously and a sympathetic principal concludes that there is no case. But Vanessa’s parents are notified of the incident.
When this starts up again due to Jenny’s complaint Vanessa is called and told that her friends have heard her brag about her relationship with Strane. She says that she lied to them – hoping that the problem would go away and secretly thrilled at her cleverness. That backfires as she is expelled for defaming the character of a teacher.
Her mom found the picture of Strane and her while cleaning out her effects from school and is furious but hides the fact from her dad. She knows that Vanessa did indeed have relationship and Vanessa rebels and is very rude to her mother.
She seems to behave abominably all the way through. During her exile at home, she seems to revel in shoplifting and smoking and drinking. She even flirts with an older man in a bowling alley and is rescued only by her friends from going away with him for who knows what reason. The friends also seems to be shady and one of the trio even hates her all the time.
None of it makes sense. When the dust settles, she is working at her dad’s office (Her dad being a doctor) and comes across Strane as a patient in a file. She calls and leaves a note to him saying she is starting in another school – and says that she will be eighteen then and will be waiting for him. She simply hurts her mom at every turn.
You begin to lose all sympathy for Vanessa and lose substantial interest in the book because you don’t care what happens to her anymore. Now, I am not worried morally about all the things that the ‘damaged’ Vanessa does. No; there are a lot of great books with negative characters as central out there but this seems to be pointless. Vanessa is both very cruel, and stupid (more examples later in this description). However, keep reading because there are some twists that redeem the book somewhat – not all the way but somewhat.
In the present, she mindlessly invites people she meets in a bar to her room for casual sex.
Present day, Strane is accused of rape by another girl – Shannon – in the same school and is suspended. There are articles vilifying him. You, the reader, begin to realize that Strane is indeed a pedophile. The case is unproven and Strane is delighted to get his job back. Just a few weeks later, several other girls have also accused him and he loses his job again and commits suicide. He makes an eerie call to Vanessa and she gets her personal photos taken by him all those years ago – and saves them!
Meanwhile Shannon is vilified in the internet for the ‘muder of Strane’ and is forced to close her blog and goes into hiding due to death threats.We learn that she had written everything in a blog – which she thought was private – and which was open to everyone. A reported trying to defend Shannon gets hold of it and says she will publish no matter what Vanessa wants but she would prefer to get Vanessa’s permission anyway.
The story moves between the two timelines. In the past, Vanessa learn to her shock that Strane has been constructing his case against her while he was seducing her and he was the chief reason that she got expelled – the school did not want to do it, but he insisted! Even that does not seem to get Vanessa to see the truth.
She goes to confront him and ends up in his bed, drunk, again – she manages to borrow her parent’s car telling them she needs to go to the library to study. This is a dark story, the story of a girl who keeps going back to Strane until the end, believing that he loved her and her only. In one of her earlier visits, he confesses that a girl has accused him of molestation for ‘just touching her knee’. This is before they sleep together. She sneaks up and sees the name on his laptop. Taylor Birch.
After his death, she goes to confront Taylor for Taylor and the reporter leave her alone – as she is different from the other victims, Strane’s one true love. Taylor begs her to talk – just talk. During coffee, she learns that Strane did the exact same things to Taylor and her brain threatens to explode. She does not want to believe any of this. But she realizes that he groped Taylor and many other girls. When she explains that she was different – not abused because she was willing, Taylor walks out on her in contempt and shock. She is ‘relieved’ to hear that Strane just groped the others and did not have a full relationship like he did with her. The book gives you a window into the mind of a young girl who is fully deluded about the abuse she endured and for that, this is a book unlike most others.
The problem for me is that it feels partly like the story of a stupid girl who does not even realize that she has been abused; partly like one about a girl who managed to have an early relationship wreck her life; partly like a doormat who keeps going back to an abusive and conniving man; partly like a lost lamb who cannot make basic decisions or move on; partly like a girl who was wrecking her life anyway with alcohol and dope and which feels like she would have done it with or without Strane’s influence.
So, maybe the author wanted to tell the story from all sides – even Strane’s but it feels like a jumble until the very end when it abruptly ends on a tentatively hopeful direction.
What it leaves behind for me though, is confusion about the message. Maybe there is none.
6/10
= = Krishna