Consent
A Memoir of Stolen Adolescence
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5,0 • 1 note
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- 6,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
The devastating and powerful memoir from a French publisher who was abused by a famous writer from the age of thirteen
‘Dazzling’ New York Times
‘A gut-punch of a memoir with prose that cuts like a knife’ Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of My Dark Vanessa
Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of France’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of an influential man. At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Springora, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story.
Consent is the story of her stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Springora’s painstaking memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a thirteen-year-old girl to become involved with a fifty-year-old man.
Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales, French history and the author’s personal life, Consent offers intimate insights into the meaning of love and consent, the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives.
Reviews
‘A Molotov cocktail flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury. A triumph’ New York Times
‘A memoir of lost adolescence … elegant, focused, fluidly translated’ Guardian
‘Rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity – and beautifully translated’ The Times
‘A gut-punch of a memoir with prose that cuts like a knife. Springora never loses sight of the teenage girl at the centre of her story even as she lays bare a culture’s hypocrisies and failures. Painful and powerful, Consent reads like a reckoning’ Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of My Dark Vanessa
‘Incisive and brave, Consent examines how society often fails to protect young women in the most dangerous of ways’ Louise O’Neill
‘[Vanessa Springova’s] account makes one of the strongest points yet in the French #MeToo debate’ Los Angeles Review of Books
‘Fierce and controlled … a searing indictment of an overly permissive era that has triggered a national reckoning in France’ Daily Mail
‘Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch’ The New Yorker
‘[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways’ Slate
About the author
Vanessa Springora is a French editor and writer. Consent is her first book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
French publishing executive Springora debuts with a piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer. In the process, she condemns the literary enclaves of 1970s and '80s France that she says elevated the predatory needs of artists above the safety of children: "We have witnessed only Catholic priests being bestowed such a level of impunity." Referring to herself as "V," the nickname given to her by "G" in his published work, Springora recounts how she met G through her mother, who worked in publishing. The pair found each other captivating, and over the course of a year, Springora turned "from a muse into a fictional character," as G portrayed himself to the public as a mentor rather than a pedophile and a sexual predator. (He also, she writes, paid for sex with 11-year-old boys.) Springora was haunted by the experience into her adulthood and to the point of a psychotic breakdown, when she wondered, "How is it possible to acknowledge having been abused, when it's impossible to deny having consented?" In elegant prose, Springora corrects G's fictions of "mentorship" in telling her story while shedding light on the devastating aftermath. This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.
