Fiona Apple was raped when she was twelve years old . . . I had no reason to care about rape then—I was a lucky kid, safe and securely loved—but that story hit me hard. Somehow I sensed what was coming to me even then. Really, though, what girl doesn’t? It looms over you, that threat of violence. They drill the danger into your head until it starts to feel inevitable. You grow up wondering when it’s finally going to happen (192).

What she does not understand and fails to recognize is the selfish exploitation of her innocence and desire for love when it arrives. The author is at pains to make clear that this is fiction, not her life. It is a necessary distinction since Russell gets everything so right. The molester announcing that he is the “toughest” teacher his students will have in high school. Maybe in college.

[Scary that I used to warn students that my Honors class would be their hardest in their Junior Year (an appeal to hubris), and students often thanked me for that after attending college.]

The parallel visions, flipping back and forth between then and now chapters in these pages explore both how she is groomed and “seduced” at 15 and how she excuses and redefines that experience into her 30s. It is explicit, very much so. [I don’t usually read explicit sex. A warning there.]

I was not molested as a child, but my tolerance for reading about abuse is very low. I have never been able to read Lolita but I admire what Russell does with the novel and other writings here. I am amazed I could stand to read it.

My favorite Ninth grade teacher had an affair with a Seventh Grader. When a friend told me, I recall two powerful and simultaneous reactions: Why her and not me? and It’s a lie. I was ashamed to have felt jealous of what I thought in my naiveté must be love and knew even then that envy was unhealthy and pushed it aside. But it was years before I was forced to accept that the accusation of molestation was not a lie. Yes, he did that. He had a relationship with a child of no more than twelve. I have since witnessed men do this to vulnerable young girls—men who were trusted as teachers, coaches, a campus cop. These men NEVER acknowledge their trespasses because they serve only their personal desire. Abuse is heaped on victims of sexual exploitation. The girl is blamed, threatened, and ruined by the violator and by society. So is Vanessa. Her abuser so redefines her identity that she is ruined, truly and utterly ruined.

The ending satisfied me, though I feared throughout the reading that it would not. I believe this story. It is very hard not to believe it is all true.