Critics and supporters were quick to join the online fray, even though few of them had read Excavation and fewer had read My Dark Vanessa, which wouldn’t even be released for weeks to come. Even though the social media maelstrom would die down, it had lasting results: Oprah dropped My Dark Vanessa as a book club pick. The world of social media, where Russell had always been so comfortable, became a hostile place, particularly when some people began to make demands that Russell prove she herself had experienced sexual assault — a kind of twisted digital virginity test. While Russell rightly refused to respond to those demands, in a profile for New York Magazine , she did allude to the idea that My Dark Vanessa was based, at least in part, on some of her personal experiences. But she remains firm in her conviction that the book is a novel, not a memoir – and that it is not, in any way plagiarised.