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Consent: A Memoir

Consent: A Memoir

by Jill Ciment

Pantheon ·2024 ·145 pages
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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.


Reviews

"At pains to remind us that memoirs can easily lapse into mythology ..."

Becca Rothfeld· The Washington Post 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

"Provide a pointed reminder that all writing is selective, and memoirs are certainly no exception ..."

Heller McAlpin· NPR Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"A memoir acknowledging that her marriage began with a serious transgression and weighing this against everything else it gave her."

Laura Miller· Slate 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

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