Consent

Reviews

One of TIME’S 100 Must-Read Books of the Year

“Frank, provocative and deeply compelling.” —People
 
“Remarkable . . . at once forthright, thoughtful, and moving. . . . This is a book poised to fuel plenty of discussion.” —Heller McAlpin, NPR
 
“Arresting. . . . Bold. . . . Ciment has given readers a brave and beautiful variant on the #MeToo memoir.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air
 
“Enthralling. . . . In Consent, Ciment revisits what she wrote back [in Half a Life], re-scrutinizes the memories she tapped and the story she built from them, and then brings the history of her marriage.” —Slate
 
“Early in Consent Ciment asks whether her marriage was all ‘fruit from the poisonous tree.’ It is a daring question, and she is unsentimental and unflinching enough to answer it convincingly, which is to say, complexly. She shrinks from nothing in her accounting: not from Arnold’s sordid advances, not from her teenage naiveté, not from the many indignities of her situation. Nor does she shrink from the most scandalous surprise of all: the possibility of a love forceful enough to overturn the habitual hierarchies.” —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post
 
“Fiercely honest yet delicate. . . . Ciment reexamines her relationship and the project of memoir writing itself: whose memories count and how stories of our youth get reconfigured with the passage of time.” —Oprah Daily 

“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. By turns stinging, hilarious, and poignant, this is rare and luminous testimony to creativity, commitment, and love over all.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

“Candid. . . . A hot bullet of a memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Consent just might be the new gold standard for the memoir. By revisiting a part of her life that she wrote about nearly three decades ago, comparing her then-account to the way she would describe the same events today, Jill Ciment asks exhilarating questions about who we are, how we let the stories we tell ourselves and others settle and define us. What makes Consent so fascinating is that Ciment kept the tapes: her previous account makes her able to turn her memories at different angles against the light. What really happened? Everything in her first memoir was true, and the story hasn’t changed (it is still, at its heart, a love story). Yet something has changed. Ciment tackles deep and painful issues without any fuss. In prose that is concise yet warm, unsparingly honest and often hilarious, she gives us this rarest of gifts: a book that is both urgently of its moment and absolutely timeless.” —Camille Bordas, author of How to Behave in A Crowd and The Material
 
“In her new memoir, Ciment revisits the scandalous romance that became the defining fact of her personal life—her passionate and enduring relationship with a man thirty years her senior, begun when she was a teenager.  In her fiercely intelligent and imaginative style, Ciment interrogates her memories through a new lens, and in the process creates an indelible portrait not just of a marriage, but of the remembering mind, its revisions and revelations.” —Jo Ann Beard, author of The Boys of My Youth and Festival Days
 
“In Consent, Ciment explores deep and difficult questions about her lifelong relationship with her much older husband. Her writing, as always, is imaginative, funny, and thoroughly entertaining as she reflects upon the ethics of their relationship. Her story resonates today, maybe even more than it did when it happened.” —Nicole Holofcener, American Film Director and Writer of You Hurt My Feelings Expand reviews