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Consent: A Memoir
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Original price was: $27.00.$13.99Current price is: $13.99.
Detailed description:
From the acclaimed novelist (“A virtuoso”—Donna Seaman, Booklist), a deft, shocking memoir that asks whether we can judge past behavior by today’s moral codes, as the author reevaluates her decades-long marriage to the forty-seven-year-old man she met when she was seventeen, revisiting a singular passion in the 21st-century aftermath of #MeToo.
“Few writers can tackle the bedroom—or female libido . . . but Ciment is a master: in exquisitely spare prose, she nails it.” — The New York Times
In this unflinching account of the ardent love affair between the author and her painting teacher, which began in the 1970s, when she was a teenager and he was married with two children, Ciment not only reflects on how their love ignited (who leaned in first for that kiss?) but interrogates her 1996 memoir on the subject, Half a Life. She asks herself if she told the whole truth back then, and what truth looked like to her in the even longer-ago era of love-bead curtains when she fell in love, when no one asked who was served by the permissibility around a May-December romance. In the light of #metoo, with new understanding about the balance of power between an older man and an underage girl, Ciment re-explores the erotic wild ride and intellectual flowering that shaped an improbable but blissful marriage that lasted for forty-five years, until her husband’s death at ninety-three.
This riveting book about art, memory, and morality asks many questions along the way: Does a story’s ending excuse its beginning? Does a kiss in one moment mean something else entirely five decades later? Can a love that starts with such an asymmetrical balance of power ever right itself? Suffused with the wisdom that comes with time, Consent is an author’s brave recasting of her life’s settled narrative, and an urgent read for women of all ages.
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Categories: Women Writers
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Consent: A Memoir
Price:
Original price was: $27.00.$13.99Current price is: $13.99.
TamGeo2 –
I thought it was weird to spend time in this novel reflecting on what was written incorrectly with a previous novel. The title is referring to the age the author met her to-be husband. She was under age and he was married & thirty years older. Their life experiences and how the age gap contributed to their journey is reflected throughout.
S. Underwood –
This is an interesting retake on an author’s own memoir. While she doesn’t completely take back her 45 year relationship, she does dissect her original memoir and look at the places she was likely lying to herself and omitting information.
Bonnie Brody –
Jill Ciment continues her memoir from her previous one, ‘Half a Life’. ‘Consent’ details the 45 year love affair and marriage of the author and her painting teacher, Arnold Mesches, who was 30 years her senior. The two met when Ciment was 17 and taking a class from Mesches. She was immediately attracted to him and instigated the relationship with a kiss. But did she really? After all, there was a huge power and age differential and, despite her desire, he held the upper hand. And after 45 years, how accurate is a memory?
Ms. Ciment examines the wondrous and loving years of her marriage and its May-December quality in light of the ‘me too’ movement and current beliefs regarding misogyny, power, patriarchy and control. She questions her relationship with Mesches in contrast to present propriety and comes to the conclusion that their union was one of love and equality.
I have read all of the author’s books and admired each of them. This one is perhaps her best book ever. It is filled with concerns and meanderings on love, sexual politics, art, questions about her relationship, and a lot of self-examination. I highly recommend this book.
E. Collet –
A very well-written thought-provoking book. Excellent.
FRS –
Such an honest account of a union that survived so much ups & downs, a union that was taboo, but that endured.
Well written and totally honest.
Savvyreader –
This telling of the last part of an age unequal marriage and coupled life is impossibly compelling and very loving.
A real love described meaningfully. For the ages.
Highly recommended as a quality read.
D.L. Drummond –
The truths Jill Ciment revisits in her account of her love story with a husband 30 years her senior are difficult to read. But there is undeniable beauty in the realness of her experience and the devotion that she and Arnold had for one another. She asks early on in the novel if their entire story is tainted due to being “fruit from the poisonous tree,” and I can’t answer that.
I can’t pretend not to be revolted by Arnold’s actions and yet, at the same time, I can clearly understand why Jill loved him. I’m not sure how I should feel after reading this memoir. I think I’ve come away from it with the same uncertainty as the author, but I don’t doubt that Jill loved Arnold and vice versa, regardless of how they began.
JAG –
I admire the way the author describes her feelings. She often verbalizes what has often been for me non-verbal thoughts.