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Consent
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 4 hrs
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Publisher's summary
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 listen for women of all ages.
Critic reviews
“In Consent, Ciment explores deep and difficult questions about her lifelong relationship with her much older husband. Her writing, as always, is imaginative, funny, and thoroughly entertaining as she reflects upon the ethics of their relationship. Her story resonates today, maybe even more than it did when it happened.” —Nicole Holofcener, American Film Director and Writer of You Hurt My Feelings
“In her new memoir, Ciment revisits the scandalous romance that became the defining fact of her personal life—her passionate and enduring relationship with a man thirty years her senior, begun when she was a teenager. In her fiercely intelligent and imaginative style, Ciment interrogates her memories through a new lens, and in the process creates an indelible portrait not just of a marriage, but of the remembering mind, its revisions and revelations.” —Jo Ann Beard, author of The Boys of My Youth and Festival Days
“Consent just might be the new gold standard for the memoir. By revisiting a part of her life that she wrote about nearly three decades ago, comparing her then-account to the way she would describe the same events today, Jill Ciment asks exhilarating questions about who we are, how we let the stories we tell ourselves and others settle and define us. What makes Consent so fascinating is that Ciment kept the tapes: her previous account makes her able to turn her memories at different angles against the light. What really happened? Everything in her first memoir was true, and the story hasn’t changed (it is still, at its heart, a love story). Yet something has changed. Ciment tackles deep and painful issues without any fuss. In prose that is concise yet warm, unsparingly honest and often hilarious, she gives us this rarest of gifts: a book that is both urgently of its moment and absolutely timeless.” —Camille Bordas, author of How to Behave in A Crowd and The Material
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True fable deeply moving
- By EllieBK on 02-27-21
By: Vanessa Springora, and others
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Half a Life
- A Memoir
- By: Darin Strauss
- Narrated by: Darin Strauss
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journey.
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Penance Finally And Thankfully Meets With Peace
- By Philippa on 03-08-12
By: Darin Strauss
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All Friends Are Necessary
- A Novel
- By: Tomas Moniz
- Narrated by: Andrew Joseph Perez
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Efren “Chino” Flores has just moved back to the Bay Area from Seattle, jumping from sublet to sublet. In Washington, he was a beloved middle school biology teacher with a loving wife and a child on the way until a stunning loss changed his life. Now he’s working temp jobs and struggling to put himself back out into the world. But there to nurture Chino is a coterie of new and old friends and lovers who form a protective web around him.
By: Tomas Moniz
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The Uptown Local
- Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir
- By: Cory Leadbeater
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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As an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days of childhood, Cory had sought refuge from the rougher parts of life in the pages of books. Suddenly, he found himself the personal assistant to a titan of literature: Joan Didion. In the nine years that followed, Cory shared Joan’s rarefied world, transformed not only by her blazing intellect but by her generous friendship and mentorship.
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Great Narrator, Wonderful Writer
- By Ian S. on 06-16-24
By: Cory Leadbeater
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Monsters
- A Fan's Dilemma
- By: Claire Dederer
- Narrated by: Claire Dederer
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.
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I needed this book.
- By Jennifer E. Glapion on 05-16-23
By: Claire Dederer
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You Get What You Pay For
- Essays
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery.
By: Morgan Parker
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The Switch
- A Novel
- By: Lily Samson
- Narrated by: Avita Jay, Polly Edsell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Young couple Elena and Adam are housesitting in a posh corner of London and are instantly seduced by their new upscale surroundings. Here, Elena meets her neighbor, the enigmatic artist Sophia, and soon becomes obsessed with her beauty, her easy poise, and her husband, Finn. Sophia is everything Elena isn’t—glamorous, alluring, successful—and Finn exerts a mysterious pull on Elena that she can’t seem to shake.
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Too silly
- By Jill on 06-30-24
By: Lily Samson
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Sipsworth
- By: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.
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Loved this book!
- By Virginia J. on 06-04-24
By: Simon Van Booy
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My Black Country
- A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future
- By: Alice Randall
- Narrated by: Alice Randall
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author presents “a celebration of all things country music” (Ken Burns) as she reflects on her search for the first family of Black country music.
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Great history I never knew!
- By KWK on 08-04-24
By: Alice Randall
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Love Junkie
- A Memoir
- By: Rachel Resnick
- Narrated by: Lauren Weedman
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Love Junkie is the story of Rachel Resnick's dangerous addiction to sex and love. It's an addiction that has cost her in horrible ways throughout the course of her life - from the time she rear-ended a family van on the freeway because she was obsessively speed-dialing her lover's phone, to when she blew the deadline on her first major newspaper assignment. Love Junkie charts Rachel Resnick's harrowing emotional journey from addiction to intimacy, from despair to hope, and the men - the worst kind of men - who accompanied her on it.
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Cupid, Take your Bow and Shove It!
- By Susie on 02-14-13
By: Rachel Resnick
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Everything Nothing Someone
- A Memoir
- By: Alice Carrière
- Narrated by: Alice Carrière
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Alice Carrière tells the story of her unconventional upbringing in Greenwich Village as the daughter of a remote mother, the renowned artist Jennifer Bartlett, and a charismatic father, European actor Mathieu Carrière. From an early age, Alice is forced to navigate her mother’s recovered memories of ritualized sexual abuse, which she turns into art, and her father’s confusing attentions—her childhood is spent in an adult’s world, with little-to-no boundaries or supervision.
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This book is awful.
- By af_90 on 12-17-23
By: Alice Carrière
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The Friday Afternoon Club
- A Family Memoir
- By: Griffin Dunne
- Narrated by: Griffin Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good.
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Not funny but still worthy
- By H. Winslow on 06-17-24
By: Griffin Dunne
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Ambition Monster
- A Memoir
- By: Jennifer Romolini
- Narrated by: Jennifer Romolini
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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After years of relentlessly racing up the professional ladder, Jennifer Romolini reached the kind of success many crave: a high-profile, C-suite dream job, a book well-received enough that reporters wanted to know the secrets to her success, and a gig traveling around the country giving speeches on “making it.” She had a handsome and clever husband, a precocious child. But beneath this polished surface was a powder keg of unresolved trauma and chronic overwork. It was all about to blow.
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Love love love
- By James on 06-07-24
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Half a Life
- A Novel
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portuguese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray.
By: V. S. Naipaul
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Fiction: The Illusion of Being Ordinary (2010): Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
- Panel 2014
- By: Ms. Jill Ciment, Ms. Elizabeth Crane, Ms. Dylan Landis
- Narrated by: Ms. Susan Salter Reynolds
- Length: 51 mins
- Original Recording
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The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.
By: Ms. Jill Ciment, and others
What listeners say about Consent
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Eric A. Ruthford
- 06-18-24
Excellent writing; overworked main question
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.
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- Hard2Please
- 06-29-24
Intimate Story Well-told
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.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Frog Queen
- 06-21-24
Not quite sure why it didn't grab me
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.
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- Donna WEnsell
- 07-12-24
Very thought provoking
This book captured me from beginning to end. I, too, at 17 got wrapped up in my teacher and ended up marrying him (although he was just working at a record store when I started dating him and he was only 5 years older- and also ended up in divorce 20 years later). But I wonder, too, about the imbalance of power and how I was overcome with awe when we first dated. However, with any relationship the “every day” seeps in. The simple loving (at first) gestures and the everyday boredom of chores and taking care of each other. She captures some of the essence of what it was like to live every day, and asks the questions “was it cursed because of how it started?” I couldn’t put the book down! The only problem was the plot kept jumping around in time and sometimes hard to follow.
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- Grace
- 07-16-24
worth a listen
Ciment has an incredibly compelling point of view, especially for a young female artist reader who paints about the female experience like myself. Her self reflection on her ability to concent as a 16 y/o is honest and bold. I cried during the chapters about her younger brother's tragic story.
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- stacey a shapiro
- 08-07-24
I'm speechless and in awe
This the most beautiful love letter. Having read and adored all of Jill Ciment's book, I was afraid to venture into this one. afraid it would disclose terrible truths through the lens of the 'me too' shift. it was so poignant and illuminating. Only it was just too short.
the narration was sublime.
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- Janice S. Parker
- 06-18-24
Brilliant writing and rigorous honesty. A deeply touching narrative of a great love affair.
I also enjoyed the insights into the art world, the painting process, and the writers journey . The spoken narrative was excellent & engaging throughout. This book was simply wonderful!
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- Robert
- 06-22-24
The author’s honesty
I love this story and how it is told. I admired the author’s courage, honesty, bravery and willingness to dive deep into the subject. The view into this story from 3 perspectives of time provides much introspection not unlike what any of us experience in looking back at decisions we have made throughout our lives. I loved how the author and Arnold truly loved each other. It would be easy to judge the start of this story harshly and with good reason. Though in this story it seems the best judges are the insiders and not those of us looking it. I also thought the reader of this story did an amazing performance. She clearly has listened to the author’s words. She portrays the story through her voice with a deep sense and appreciation of the love that carries these two through to their final kiss.
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- Sonja Halvorson
- 07-31-24
Complex, difficult and important read
Thoughtful, heart wrenching, uneasy book. Loved it. Made me think for a long while between chapters.
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- Miss M
- 08-12-24
Very Well Written and Interesting
A true portrait of the end of a May/December romance. An asterisk to an earlier memoir. It was beautifully written but I wasn’t left feeling left with anything unexpected or truly profound. I found the relationship between her spouse and mother interesting and the daddy issues she had were obvious and expected. But I’m not as blown away by this as I had hoped. And I can’t help but feel a degree of distrust in the author now from holding things back in her earlier work.
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