Title: Consent

Author: Vanessa Springora

Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Harper Collins

Publication Date: 18th February 2021

Rating: 4.5/5

Cover:

Summary:

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.

Review:

Consent is not an easy book to read but it is one that definitely should be read, and read widely. Vanessa Springora is brutally direct and concise in the way she analyses her ‘relationship’ with a man who, essentially, stole her adolescence and got away with it because he was a member of the literary elite. It is a devastating unsettling story which will make any reader furious at the way it unfolds. Springora is immensely brave with her unglamorous honesty in a way that shows just how damaging abuse and manipulation truly is. She takes a no holds barred approach and Consent is all the more powerful for it. Painful, shocking, razor sharp and steely. Highly recommended.

✶✶✶✶.5

I received an electronic copy of the book via Netgalley. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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