Death is not always physical. Sometimes it comes in the form of self-destructive female desire that caves to abuse, accepting it as a prized possession. Female desire sometimes refuses to live in the orderly house of kindness and logic. Instead, harm feels familiar and there is therefore safety in abuse, self-inflicted or otherwise. Women have centuries of trauma to thank for that. Being exploited is the price Vanessa and Nolan’s unnamed narrator have to pay to be able to afford a brief trip away from being alone. Twisting a man’s abusive behavior into a romantic act is the only way forward, or so these women have convinced themselves to believe. 

In Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa, 15-year-old Vanessa’s first love is her teacher, a 42-year-old Jacob. Jacob cleverly exploits her hormonal teenage mind and her deepest desire for admiration. He breaches all boundaries and starts touching her inappropriately in class, much to Vanessa’s pleasure. He quotes Nabokov and starts calling her “My Dark Vanessa.” He gifts her Lolita, which Vanessa becomes obsessed with to a point when she confuses her own memories with those of Lo and Humbert.

The novel opens as an adult Vanessa tries to recount her ‘affair’ — if we can call it that — with Jacob. Vanessa still hasn’t admitted to herself that she has been sexually abused by Jacob. Instead, she remains fixated on him. Since her teenage years, she has been full of longing and desire for this monstrous man who repeatedly raped her in the past and is now seeking her support to defend him against allegations of sexual harassment. Vanessa says, “I wasn’t abused, not like that.” She strongly believes that she wasn’t “raped raped.” She adds, “All I can think of is the lovely warm feeling I’d get when he stroked my hair.”

Vanessa is a classic victim who protects her abuser as the truth will break her. She is mad at the world that vilifies Jacob and still delusionally thinks that he was in love with her. One loves as one knows how, and for Vanessa, loving her abuser is a way of loving herself. She has a dull job and so much of her potential has been wasted because of her obsession with Jacob. Yet she has her sights set on Jacob as if he is the prize that will finally stabilize her life. Losing her desire for Jacob will mean losing a pivotal part of herself, something she has built her personality around. Vanessa’s constant denials of her own victimhood and her stark refusal to stop loving it signify the ambivalences inherent in abuser-abused relationships. 

Megan Nolan’s Acts Of Desperation is a tour de force chronicling the many paradoxes of female desire. The narrator is in her early 20s and in love with a man named Ciaran who is cold, casually cruel, and still in love with his ex-girlfriend. The narrator’s love for this man, the toxicity they share, and the way she feels the happiest in a sacrificial role leave the readers feeling claustrophobic and gasping for air. She willfully removes herself from her friends, narrowing her life down to revolve around Ciaran: cooking him effortful meals, the increasingly joyless sex they have, and the bottles of wine she downs when Ciaran isn’t there to monitor her. Though she revels in her victimhood, pushing herself to anorexia, and having periods where she cuts herself, she also longs to be free. Her desire to be debased by Ciaran stands in sharp contrast to her desire to evolve into an independent woman.

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite authors was Kate Morton, who I once remember saying in an interview, “Write the book you want to read.” She was later the subject of a school project that I did in which I included this quote of hers, but now I can’t seem to find any source to back up her saying that. But it doesn’t really matter, considering there are a wealth of authors and creatives who have been credited with some version of that quote — a fact which I had no idea of as a teen.

The best known and most accredited form of the “write the book you want to read” saying comes from Toni Morrison. In 1981, she spoke at the annual meeting of the Ohio Arts Council, where she was reported as stating, “Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” A simple Google search will tell you not only that the internet loves this quote, but that there’s no shortage of writers and authors who have said something along the same lines, making it virtually impossible to credit the sentiment of the quote to only one person.

In 1951, for example, crime novelist Mickey Spillane responded to a question of why he continued to write material that some readers, including his father, found distasteful: “I write the kind of stuff I’d like to read but can’t find. If I didn’t like it I wouldn’t write it.” C.S. Lewis, beloved author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was quoted in a biography as saying, “I wrote the books I should have liked to read if I could have got them. That’s always been my reason for writing. People won’t write the books I want, so I have to do it myself.” Additionally, in 1955, Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien shared that Lewis had passed on that very wisdom and quoted him as proclaiming, “If they won’t write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious.”

And it doesn’t stop there. After White Oleander became a bestseller when it was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club, Janet Finch said in 1999, “As a writer, I’m always trying to create the book I want to read, but can’t find anywhere. Mine happens to be for anyone with a strong stomach.” In 2002, as part of “Writers on Writing” series in The New York Times, Ann Patchett stated, “Sometimes if there’s a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.”

The list goes on. Anne Lamott’s most famous saying is, “I write books I’d love to come upon.” Madeleine L’Engle shared a similar philosophy concerning children’s literature: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” Beverly Cleary is most often quoted as having said, “If you don’t see the book you want on the shelves, write it.” And I’m sure any number of your own favorite authors have said something to the same effect, as writing the book you want to read appears to be one of the most valuable pieces of advice one writer can give to another.