The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

May 17, 2023

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop

Before starting college, Rachel and her best friend Caroline spent a summer traveling in Europe, ending up working at a dive bar at an upscale resort on a Greek island. Eighteen years later, she returns with her husband to find the place greatly changed, now a tourist destination rather than an exclusive resort. But when she runs into a woman she worked with, memories that Rachel would rather forget begin to surface.

Similar to My Dark Vanessa, with teenaged girls being abused by older manipulative men. I thought this would be a good summer read, but it's not - rather than being fun and suspenseful, it's depressing and there were no surprises. I didn't feel a connection to the characters or particularly care what happened to them. Rachel in particular is completely brainwashed. It felt like the author was trying to cash in on the current Me Too movement. I did a lot of skimming, especially in the second half of the book. Disappointing.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

Greek islands

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

February 20, 2020

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Vanessa is a bright student who is seduced by her English teacher at a prestigious Maine boarding school.  Even while she was attending the school, rumors flew around about her and the teacher.  Many years later, a current student who has accused the teacher of misconduct contacts Vanessa, asking for her support.  The story line moves back and forth from the time Vanessa is a high school student to Vanessa at age 32, working a dead-end job as a concierge at a high-end hotel, still dealing with the fallout her experiences with the teacher as she comes to realize that it wasn’t a love story, it was exploitation.

This book made me furious.  Yet it is an important topic that needs to come out of hiding.

The teacher (Strane) made my skin crawl, he was such a slimy jerk who manipulated children, referring to it as "grooming."  He is so creepy that I had to skim over a number of the sections where he featured prominently.  Strane gives Vanessa a copy of Lolita to read – by this point, Vanessa is so under his spell that she sees it as a tragic love story, not as the story of a morally bereft pedophile who is sexually obsessed with a child.  Strane has so much control over her that she lies and takes the blame so that he can keep his job.  It takes Vanessa over 15 years to accept that the experiences traumatized her.

This is definitely not going to be for everyone, since there are repeated graphic scenes of statutory rape of an underage child.  While it is well-written and there are many cultural and literary allusions, it is also quite disturbing, and I sort of wish I could un-read it.  Vanessa and Strane debate about whether all girls mature at the same rate, and can a 15 year old be mature enough to have a sexual relationship with a 42 year old man – the answer is no, when you're a teenager, it’s the hormones talking – 15 year olds are NOT mentally mature enough to make that kind of a decision.  I'm pretty sure most 15 year olds (girls and boys) are infatuated with at least one teacher at some point.  I know I was, and it would have been devastating to have been abused that way by a teacher that I adored.

It’s been all over the news this week that the Boy Scouts of America organization has declared bankruptcy in order to protect its assets from the growing number of sexual abuse charges that have been filed against the organization (the cases number in the thousands).  What is wrong with so many men????  They can’t keep their hands off boys, they can’t keep their hands off teen-aged girls, they don’t understand the word “no” when it comes to adult women.

Despite accusations of plagiarism from another author (Wendy C. Ortiz wrote a memoir called Excavation was published several years ago and covers the same story), My Dark Vanessa is already hitting a lot of lists as a best book of 2020.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.