“My Dark Vanessa” by Kate Elizabeth Russell: Non-Sequential Chapters Suggest Author’s Multiple Personality Trait

The chapters of this novel are not chronological. They skip back and forth through the years, as if the author’s mind had different compartments for different parts of the story. And since compartmentalization (into alternate personalities) is the basic format of a mind with multiple personality, non-sequential chapters might suggest an author’s multiple personality trait. 

—Incidental Signs of Split (Multiple) Personality:

“The question makes me split off from myself, like my body stays beside his while my brain retreats to the seminar table” (1, p. 44).

“I can’t focus on what is happening, my mind so far away it might as well belong to someone else” [an alternate personality] (1, p. 82).

“He did that to you, now you do this to him. You can handle a few minutes of this” (1, p. 101). (Protagonist hears an italicized voice of an alternate personality in her head.)

“Even when I try to recall it now, I can’t quite remember” (1, p. 137). (A multiple personality memory gap.)

“It doesn’t feel like my hand moving the mouse around the screen. Someone else [an alternate personality] guides it…” (1, p. 143).

1. Kate Elizabeth Russell. My Dark Vanessa. New York, William Morrow/HarperCollins. 2020.