Home Books Consent: A Memoir

Consent: A Memoir

Consent: A Memoir

by Jill Ciment

Pantheon ·2024 ·145 pages ·Culture
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
70/99
Top of the Pile

79/99

Critics

Near the Top

62/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

92/99

Rating

66/99

Volume

31/99

Rating

92/99

Volume

Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.


About This Book

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, Jill Ciment reflects on how their love ignited and interrogates her 1996 memoir on the subject, Half a Life. She asks herself whether she told the whole truth back then. What did truth look like to her in the era of love-bead curtains, when no one asked who was served by the permissibility of May-December romance? With new understanding about the imbalance of power between an older man and a minor 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 age ninety-three.


Preview


Reviews

"She shrinks from nothing in her accounting."

Becca Rothfeld· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"This is a book poised to fuel plenty of discussion."

Heller McAlpin· NPR Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Every categorical declaration and moral certainty eventually winds up at war with the story of some real individual ..."

Laura Miller· Slate Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"No one story supplants another, no brushstroke blots out the past."

Parul Sehgal· The New Yorker Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"In this sharply candid anatomy of a relationship and spellcasting remembrance, Ciment reflects on the dubious start to their union and how their roles switched over time."

Donna Seaman· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"A hot bullet of a memoir."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

Reader Reviews

0 reviews

Sign in to write a review.

No reader reviews yet. Be the first!