Consent Audiobook By Jill Ciment cover art

Consent

A Memoir

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Consent

By: Jill Ciment
Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
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Buy for $13.50

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A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the acclaimed novelist (“A virtuoso”—Donna Seaman, Booklist), a deft, shocking memoir that asks whether we can judge past behavior by today’s moral codes, as the author reevaluates her decades-long marriage to the forty-seven-year-old man she met when she was seventeen, revisiting a singular passion in the 21st-century aftermath of #MeToo.

“Few writers can tackle the bedroom—or female libido . . . but Ciment is a master: in exquisitely spare prose, she nails it.” — The New York Times

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, Ciment not only reflects on how their love ignited (who leaned in first for that kiss?) but interrogates her 1996 memoir on the subject, Half a Life. She asks herself if she told the whole truth back then, and what truth looked like to her in the even longer-ago era of love-bead curtains when she fell in love, when no one asked who was served by the permissibility around a May-December romance. In the light of #metoo, with new understanding about the balance of power between an older man and an underage 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 ninety-three.

This riveting book about art, memory, and morality asks many questions along the way: Does a story’s ending excuse its beginning? Does a kiss in one moment mean something else entirely five decades later? Can a love that starts with such an asymmetrical balance of power ever right itself? Suffused with the wisdom that comes with time, Consent is an author’s brave recasting of her life’s settled narrative, and an urgent read for women of all ages. Biographies & Memoirs Love, Dating & Attraction Relationships Art & Literature Marriage Women Authors Memoir
Compelling Perspective • Excellent Writing • Sublime Narration • Honest Storytelling • Emotional Depth

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Male reader here, and this is the first Jill Ciment book I've read. This was an enjoyable view into a life and an artistic community I would not have found any other way. It both tells the story of her relationship with the artist Arnold Mesches, and it examines the act of interpreting things that happened. Sometimes she looks back at a thing she wrote in the 1990s and says "I was reacting to it but not reflecting." Ciment is an excellent writer, describing a woman's granny dress as "something that had indicated kinship in a tribe but now exile" a turn of phrase that made me go "oooh!" when I heard it as it summed up several years of transition that one person had been through.

One criticism: the central question that she's working on in this book is overworked and not interesting enough for the amount of space she devotes to it. She was 17 and he was 47 when they got together, does this mean they're forever cursed by this crime? And the answer is... up to the interpretation of the individual woman involved. The "metoo" movement can't answer this for you, the individual woman needs to. She seems to have been ok. Some people are ready to marry at 17. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone as their Plan A, but there's no "know-it-all" answer to stamp on it.

Excellent writing; overworked main question

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I bought this book because I could relate to the topic. Somehow, the author's style of writing seemed to ump around too much to grab me. She jumped around between the artists' styles, and the relationships without any apparent connection. Was not worth the time for me.

Not quite sure why it didn't grab me

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Great novel by a great author well presented by the producers and very. Clear voice of the reader

Great story well written & presentation

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The narration of this book was excellent. The writing was so strong too. I remained engaged from beginning to end, which honestly is rare for me.
I guess my only nit is that by the end of it I still was not sure how deep the love for her husband had become by the end. The emphasis throughout was how Arnold aged, rather than how Jill’s feelings about the marital relationship matured.
Really liked this though.

Intimate Story Well-told

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Her Self reflection and ability to attempt to revisit past thoughts and belief, written words etc is encouraging and brave

Honesty

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