BROOKLYN, N.Y. One of the most frustrating aspects of Vladimir Nabokovs novel Lolita is that the reader never hears from the title character. The story is told entirely from the perspective of Humbert Humbert, a man in his late 30s who kidnaps and repeatedly rapes his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Hes an unreliable narrator who sees himself as a slave to Lolitas seductive powers.

Humbert describes Lolita, whose real name is Dolores Haze, as playful and flirtatious, but she also cries at night and eventually runs away from him. Shes a complicated survivor, and we dont know what Lolita thinks of her abuser or to what extent she considers herself a victim.

My Dark Vanessa, the debut novel by Kate Elizabeth Russell, might give readers some idea. The book gets inside the head of a character who has complicated feelings toward her perpetrator and makes space for victims who havent found their place in the Me Too movement. Unlike Lolita a book Russell says she became obsessed with at 14 the novel is told entirely from the victims perspective.

With stomach-turning yet poetic prose, the book explores the abusive relationship between 42-year-old English teacher Jacob Strane and his 15-year-old student Vanessa Wye. My Dark Vanessa oscillates between the year 2000, when Vanessa meets Strane at her elite boarding school, and 2017, when five other current and former students come forward to accuse him of sexual assault amid the Me Too movement. Vanessa doesnt consider herself a victim and refuses to join the campaign to get him fired.

I could participate in this movement of women upon women upon women lining the walls with every bad thing thats ever happened to them, but Im not going to lie to fit in, she says.