Vanessa Springora

"A French memoir in the age of #metoo. A literary sensation, Vanessa Springora's Consent weaves her personal narrative of a relationship during her childhood with a famous, much older writer into a stunning and forceful indictment of the literary world that allowed sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked"--

Consent

Already an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer—a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked. Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity. Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world. At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Vanessa, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story, offering her perspective of those events sharply known. Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly 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 who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older. Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales and French history and her personal life, Vanessa offers an intimate and absorbing look at the meaning of love and consent and the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives. Ultimately, she offers a forceful indictment of a chauvinistic literary world that has for too long accepted and helped perpetuate gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual abuse of children. Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer

A Memoir

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"If it is illegal for an adult to have a sexual relationship with a minor who is under the age of fifteen, why is it tolerated when it is perpetrated by a representative of the artistic elite—a photographer, writer, filmmaker, or painter? Does literature really excuse everything?"


Reading this is like a journey, the heart-wrenching one. To be able to witness such tragedy of someone's life, moreover an adolescent girl who was manipulated and gaslighted and to went everything all alone is inexplicable. For once in a while it reminds me of how powerful words are. And through books we can read and take a peek at even the most outrageous story that being spoken is considered taboo. The words made to make us understand the complexity of this world and how it made human beings do things. And in the end, it intrigue me how consent is still being vague and blurred for some people when it's fundamental to know such thing and to be able to understand and implement it into our daily life. 

And I did really enjoy the experience of reading this. It's not a literary masterpiece but more like a reminder of what has been important but neglected for many years.

Ava Gardner

genuinely can not believe this memoir hasn't won a Pulitzer. one of the best books i have ever read and that is saying a lot. the prose cuts through you and opens your mind. the emotions springora went through i felt through her writing. truly no other better description than this book is a "Molotov cocktail thrown at the face of the French establishment". breathtaking and heartwrenching.

Morgan Thomas

An intense memoir about a woman who was taken advantage of by a well known author. I was moved by her story but what seemed to make it that much worse was this man would use their relationship in his books and as each one was published Springora seemed to continually relive the pain she went through. This man could not seem to let her or their experience go, harassing her for years to come. He also continued to be a celebrated literary figure with people making light and praising what he did.

This is a shocking memoir. The bravery of the author is staggering. 

Sarah Erle

** spoiler alert **
           “But Emil, he never stops lying to me.”
“But literature is all about lying, my dear young friend! Didn’t you realize?”

I learned about this book from Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of My Dark Vanessa. It fits into the same category as that book (as well as Tiger Tiger by Margaux Fragoso) yet despite the heavy similarities between all these stories, through the experiences at the center of these stories, each shines in its own specific way. Springora is a thoughtful, talented writer who has loved books for so long only to be betrayed by the world that surrounds them. This is a memoir but it’s also literary and philosophical in that it thinks about the purpose of literature and whether it can be something you sacrifice people’s lives for. Tough read, beautiful read.

There is a cracking open of the canon, of literature itself, and the truth is becoming literature as muses become the subject, the main character; these objects with someone else’s words in their mouths have agency now and are not just an afterthought or the raw material for men to make their art.

Consent

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