Consent
A novel
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3.4 • 8 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE
A sly, sensual, haunting novel about two women whose lives collide when tragedy changes them forever.
Saskia and Jenny are twins alike in appearance only: Saskia is a grad student with a single-minded focus on her studies, while Jenny is glamorous, thrill-seeking, and capricious. Still, when Jenny is severely injured in an accident, Saskia puts her life on hold to be with her sister. Sara and Mattie are sisters with another difficult dynamic. Mattie, who is younger, is intellectually disabled. Sara loves nothing more than fine wines, perfumes, and expensive clothing, and leaves home at the first opportunity. But when their mother dies, Sara inherits the duty of caring for her sister. She moves Mattie in with her--but it's not long until tragedy strikes. Now, both Sara and Saskia, having been caregivers for so long, find themselves on their own. Yet through a cascade of circumstances as devastating as they are unexpected, these two women will come together. Razor-sharp and profoundly moving, Consent is a thought-provoking exploration of the complexities of familial duty, and of how love can become entangled with guilt, resentment, and regret.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Sisters can share an incredible connection. But the same bond that strengthens can sometimes strangle. Sara is a fiercely independent academic who’s also the caregiver for her intellectually challenged sister, Mattie. Saskia is an ambitious grad student who rushes to her reckless twin sister Jenny’s side after a serious accident. Both sets of siblings are engulfed in their own compelling dramas until one person sets them on converging paths—a man with a creepy penchant for vulnerable women like Mattie and Jenny. Part compulsively readable thriller, part multilayered drama, this pageturner explores just how far the “responsible” sisters will go to set things right, whether Jenny or Mattie (ahem) consent to the plan or not. Darting through plot twists and thought-provoking moral questions at the same blistering pace, author Annabel Lyon lands at a shocking conclusion we were mulling over for days.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The lives of two pairs of sisters from Vancouver intersect in Lyon's intense, intimate novel of love, grief, and murder (after The Sweet Girl). After 30-something Sara Landow's mother dies in 2011, Sara assumes responsibility for her intellectually disabled younger sister, Mattie. A month later, when Sara returns from a short trip, Mattie has married their late mother's handyman, Robert Dwyer. While Mattie had never been declared legally incompetent, Sara doubts she is capable of consenting to marriage, and tries to have it annulled. In 2015, the lives of 27-year-old twins Saskia and Jenny Gilbert are derailed when a car accident leaves Jenny in a coma. While Jenny is still unconscious in the hospital, a man is caught masturbating in her room. As Saskia, disturbed by the news, learns about Jenny's practice of BDSM, Lyon alternates back to Sara as she grieves in the aftermath of Mattie's death from a fall for which Robert was present, a few years after they married. When Sara and Saskia eventually meet, they process their sisters' disturbing relationships. While the circumstances leading to the women's connection are not entirely surprising, their reactions ramp up the novel toward a deliciously dark conclusion. Lyon's mesmerizing novel perfectly captures the odd mix of love and resentment faced by caregivers.
