Consent: A Memoir

by Jill Ciment

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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Biography, Feminism, Art

Audible Audio

First published June 11, 2024

About the author

Jill Ciment was born in Montreal, Canada. She is the author of Small Claims, a collection of short stories and novellas; The Law of Falling Bodies, Teeth of the Dog, The Tattoo Artist, and Heroic Measures, novels; and Half a Life, a memoir. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts, a NEA Japan Fellowship Prize, two New York State Fellowships for the Arts, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Ciment is a professor at the University of Florida. She lives with her husband, Arnold Mesches, in Gainesville, Florida and Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Justin Tate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, compact memoir reflecting upon a number of intriguing topics in a post-MeToo environment. The central dilemma is that celebrated author Jill Ciment began a relationship with her art teacher when she was sixteen and he was significantly older, married, and with two children. Eventually he divorced his wife to be with her, his much-younger lover. This was the 1970s.

Ciment married her art teacher and they remained, by her own admission, a largely successful power couple until his death. He a noteworthy painter, she a popular novelist. It wasn't until after MeToo that she began to ponder if there was anything diabolical about their relationship.

I agree with Ann Patchett that this memoir pairs well with another memoir I read recently, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma. Both books come from a feminist, pro MeToo perspective, but also struggle with beloved figures who technically should be abolished in this new awakened state. For "Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma" the problematic figures are great artists with dark biographies. In Ciment's case, the figure is her own husband.

Neither book offers a solution to such internal struggles, but their rumination is perhaps more intriguing anyway. The truth is, there are no clear solutions. It's a very individual decision to make how one should feel about artists and their relationships.

If I had anything to critique about Consent it's that the titular issue isn't explored with as much reflection as I would like. It's clear by the end that Ciment had a wonderful relationship with her much-older husband and perhaps even relished a life where she was viewed as the "much younger" woman because her husband always had more wrinkles and sags than her, even as she herself grew old.

The book succeeds, however, as a case study and discussion starter. Should Ciment feel shame for her successful marriage to a man who, if he had done the same thing today, would be locked away in prison? Should all her happy memories that were, she believes, consensual from the beginning be replaced with trauma?

These are big questions that I think many people will relate to. The 1970s were very different from today, but anyone who had sexual encounters before 2017 are likely reflecting on how their experiences fit into a post-MeToo world. Such are the pangs of gaining wisdom. On one hand, a better understanding of the world is a good thing. On the other, becoming privy to injustice can be exhausting. Especially when it hits so close to home.

Overall, recommended reading!

[Celine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly nuanced, brave and tender, all at once.

I’ve possibly never before read something so unflinchingly honest about the inevitable outcome of falling in love—one day, you will have to be without them again.

I finished in bed, next to my partner, and immediately sobbed into my hands.

What a privilege to have an author like Jill. To celebrate a novel like this enter the world.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is quite disturbing: Ciment partly reframes and overwrites her 1996 Half a Life: A Memoir, thus reflecting how societal attitudes towards age-gap relationships with power imbalances have changed. When Ciment met her late husband, painter Arnold Mesches, he was her teacher, married with two children - and 30 years her senior. As she was 17, this whole thing (a.k.a. an adulterer grooming a minor) was quite shocking back then and would not fly today. And here's the kicker: Ciment acknowledges all that, but does not see herself as a victim - she even ponders how back then, the teenager seducing the more powerful older man was cool and daring. Mesches and Ciment were together for almost 50 years, until his death. Who will dare to claim the authority to tell this grown-ass woman, a smart writer, that she is incapable of defining herself, her relationship, her life? That other people know better who she is than she herself - wouldn't that be condescending?

The book reminded me of the recent Vanity Fair article about Cormac McCarthy's "muse" Augusta Britt, whom he met when she was 16, and he was 42. Yikes. But who am I to tell this 64-year-old woman who she is? Still, I think that McCarthy's decision to hook up with a vulnerable minor is disgusting. It's this dilemma that also renders Ciment's book challenging for readers, and it shows how, now long after the hedonistic 90's, questions of morality are having a renaissance.

From a literary standpoint though, I did not think this was very captivating. Sure, much like Édouard Louis in his multi-volume autobiographical project, Ciment revises former viewpoints, adds information and layers, re-evaluates events. The second part largely focuses on what it means to be the much younger partner of an aging and dying man. And yes, this investigation of mores and values, this literary remix of her own former work, is also a love story. But it didn't really grab me.

Nevertheless, I would love to read more re-evaluations of memoirs, showcasing societal change - this text is certainly an excellent conversation starter.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really sharp meditation on memoir, memory, art, power, and of course abuse. I appreciated how Ciment would pull chunks from her memoir to compare with her current thinking. I liked the writing style so much. Its a short book and lost a little focus for me in the middle, but overall really good. I would have loved for her to share why she wanted to go back and tell this story in a new way.

[kimberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of this memoir didn’t land well for me. I didn’t find the writing to be exceptional or anything to write home about but it was written well enough for me to finish (though I do suspect this was due in part to its short length—145 pages in my hardcover copy—otherwise I likely would have set it aside).

Ciment spends a lot of time in this memoir referencing her past memoir—where she positively recounts her relationship with a man 30 years her senior—and dissects it, saying “now see here… here I wasn’t being truthful”. I’m paraphrasing but you get it. She also spends so much time picking apart the actual structure and art of memoir, ultimately suggesting that you can’t trust it: “A memoir is closer to historical fiction than it is to biography.”

So what is the truth in this memoir and what is a lie when she openly admits that she was lying previously and did so with the intention to sway readers? Are readers just supposed to take everything at face value? I personally think she made herself too much of an “unreliable narrator” in her own story and created too much of a divide in her own narrative and it turned me away from the root issue. It's clear that Ciment still grapples with what was right and what was wrong within her marriage to this man so perhaps all of this was intentional... For readers to grapple with her? I'm not certain.

For me, this had promise of being a thought-provoking exploration of, what is today, considered a rather taboo relationship but it fell short in its execution.

[Jillian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a complex and thought-provoking read. The author was 16 when she met her future husband in the early 1970s. He was 30 years older and married. Within the next year, he would leave his wife to be with her. A decades-long, mostly happy relationship followed, ending only when he died in his 90s. Now, the widowed author looks at their relationship through a more mature lens and wonders…was the love of her life a predator?

This book is in conversation with an earlier memoir the author wrote in the 1990s. She examines sections of that work and wonders if she was telling the whole truth. For instance, in that book, she recalls seducing her future husband. In reality, she’s sure he was the one to kiss her first. She recalls having a crush on him while being simultaneously grossed out by his middle-aged, wrinkly neck…a detail that didn’t make it into the first memoir.

The author looks at her relationship with a refreshingly unflinching gaze, and doesn’t provide any easy answers. Her husband’s predatory act of pursuing a teenager and their later happy memories together are held in uncomfortable tension. She also provides interesting insight into what happens when a couple with a large age gap grows older…and how different being middle-aged with a 90-year-old spouse is from being the young wife of a 50-year-old.

I found this book incredibly compelling and I would absolutely recommend it.

[Ashlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are flashes of insight and beauty in this spare, skillfully written memoir. The love between the author and her husband is palpable; it shines through every page, in the quiet moments especially. I can feel her desire to protect him clash with her objective to critically examine the age gap and balance of power in their relationship. But she doesn’t seem to be interested in answering any of her own questions, though she poses some good ones. I almost hesitate to say that as criticism, because the long and short answer to all of those questions is “it’s complicated,” and while the answers are important for us as a culture to grapple with, in the context of this relationship they feel very much beside the point.

I think that neither the title nor the description of this book accurately reflect its most compelling revelations. This is the story of a long and successful marriage, distinct in its challenges and the sheer unlikelihood of it all, but not unfamiliar in its dynamics. This is not the typical experience of teenage girls who marry men 30 years their senior, obviously. I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t spent half the book expecting a more critical examination of memory in memoir or of age and consent, rather than a singular story of the very rare May-December relationship that actually works out in the end.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was reading a book review in The New York Times about this memoir when I realized the writer was Jill Ciment who had written “The Body in Question” which was a five star read for me. The review also noted some similarities between Ciment’s real life, married to a man thirty years her senior, and the main character’s life in the novel. Although I do not typically read memoirs, I was intrigued and decided to read it. It is an extremely short book and is sort of like a footnote to her first memoir about her journey to becoming an artist and writer. Where that book glossed over the origins of her teenage relationship with, artist Arnold Mesches, her husband of 45 years, this book provides a laser like focus on every detail.

Memories are a funny thing. There’s what happened to you and what you thought about it at the time, and then there’s how you remember it and what you think about it now. In 1997, Ciment’s relationship was portrayed as a great love story, but now, in the wake of the #metoo movement, she seems to be questioning everything. At one point in the story when Arnold goes blind in one eye from a surgery, he also becomes temporarily blind in his other eye. When Ciment asks the doctor why this happens, he replies “In Sympathy.” As a reader, you wonder if her blindness to whether she consented to the relationship was also in sympathy with how he viewed it at the time.

Although Ciment spends a significant amount of time examining the power dynamic between a 47 year-old art teacher and his 17 year-old student, she also looks at how this plays out years into their marriage - when he is an old man and she becomes his caretaker. At one point she thinks, “You are old and I am young and it should be my turn.” Later, her mother reminds her that while he is old enough to be her father, he’s not her parent and does not have to love her unconditionally. This theme continues on when Arnold questions whether he loves his own daughter anymore. A friend replies by saying that he thought he would never stop loving his boys and he never did, but after decades of not seeing them he does not love them as men. He only remembers them as boys and continues to love that version of them. I wondered if Ciment may have felt this way about her husband, only in reverse.

Near the end of the book she writes about the experience of schadenfreude when she sees other younger wives caring for their elderly husbands. It clicked with me that she may have felt that way all along; a kind of self-satisfaction, always thinking her love story was superior to the average person’s. Perhaps it was the #metoo movement that challenged this belief or just the process of aging and watching Arnold die. These questions may never be answered. However, on the last page of the book, Ciment writes about finding Arnold asleep on the bed “in the same position he was in when I went to seduce him forty-five years before.” An interesting ending that seems to reflect a conversation earlier in the story when Arnold says “all art is a reconsideration.” While this book reconsidered the first memoir, the reader is left to reconsider this version as well.

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to Consent: A Memoir on audiobook. I learned about the book on a list of the Top Books of 2024. I had not previously read anything by Jill Ciment. In Consent: A Memoir, Ciment frequently references her memoir, Half a Life: A Memoir.

Ciment was 17 years-old when she began dating her art teacher who was married and thirty years older than Ciment. After her art teacher divorced his wife, he married Ciment until his death many decades later.

It's an interesting journey as various family members on both sides of the family learn they are a couple.

[lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ciment is clearly very talented in this exploration of memory versus storytelling in a reconciliation against reality. But while this novel is depicted as a revision of Ciment's prior memoir illustrating her marriage, I can't help but think of Consent as anything but circular.

Even in the last words of the book, Ciment writes that she, once a 17 year old girl, "seduced" a 40-something year old man when referencing the position he now resides in as he lays dying. It's fair to say that Ciment is still processing their relationship but to frame the initiation of it as an independent pursuit of her own when she was merely a teenager is inherently deleterious. It seems difficult for Ciment to conceptualize how that their power dynamic could be considered material in the setting of the 1970s as compared to now in the wake of #MeToo etc. But the truth of the matter is that abuse exists regardless of cultural context — grooming is not an anachronism to be excused by the time period of its existence.

What's worse is that Consent also mentions that Ciment's younger brother survived an instance of sexual abuse as a child. Ciment's mother, who also knew of the relationship between her teenage daughter and the older man, is justifiably enraged about her son's suffering and reports the incident to the authorities. With the inclusion of this recounting, the reader is left with the impression that there is a particular sort of abuse that is plainly acknowledged as vile — one where the victim is a young child, a boy nonetheless. (Even the authorities in this memory reiterate this message as one tells the mother that she's "lucky" it was her son and not her daughter, as boys are always believed.)

By sharing this moment in her book, and even mentioning that the older man was present with Ciment's family as they reported the sexual abuse, the intention of its inclusion becomes evident: there is a certain type of acceptable abuse, and Ciment's experience of grooming simply sits outside of that mold.

Anyway, there are other books that explore the trauma of grooming / abuse candidly without apologizing on behalf of groomers. Highly recommend Consent by Vanessa Springora, Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz, and My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly interesting reconsideration of what the memoir is and how we construct narratives for ourselves and for others. The first half is certainly the most interesting, as Ciment offers something like a play by play of how her previous memoir obscured and sometimes completely ignored the truth about her relationship with her eventual husband.

She was 17, there was a 30 year age gap between them, and while they went on to have more than 40 years of marriage, it does not appear that they ever jointly grappled with the circumstances of their early relationship. As Ciment does now, after her husband's death, she can admit the things she couldn't before and interrogate questions she was never willing to.

Ciment continues to follow their marriage in bits and pieces over the years, though these later times don't offer as much to consider. She seems interested, most of all, in the later years of a relationship with a significant age gap, the way it still impacts them even when it becomes less obvious. It seems possible she is also trying to justify their relationship, show value through endurance, but perhaps she'll have to interrogate that in the next memoir.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do I call him? My husband? Arnold? I would if the story were about how we met and married, shared meals for forty-five years, raised a puppy, endured illnesses. But if the story is about an older man preying on a teenager, shouldn’t I call him “the artist,” or better still, “the art teacher,” with all the word teacher implies?

So begins the most unusual love story postmortem I have ever read. When they met, Jill was just 17, and the well-known painter Arnold Mesches, was 47. They stayed together until his death of leukemia 46 years later.

There is no question that the two had much in common. Both Jill and Arnold were exceptionally talented rule-breakers who embraced life according to their own needs and desires. Jill was a teenage girl from an unstable home, and Arnold? As a serial adulterer, he created unstable homes in his personal life.

The dynamic between them was so unusual that Jill Ciment, then in her mid-40s, wrote about it in her 1996 memoir, Half a Life. Now, in her 70s, Jill revisits and questions many of the memories of her younger self. “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?” Jill takes an unflinching look at the question that underlies all of it: was her husband a predator when he encouraged a relationship with a young and volatile teen?

Jill Ciment spares nothing in her examination of this marriage, including the disadvantages of dealing with the physical deterioration of a man certainly old enough to be her father. What’s interesting is the parts she alludes to but never completely owns: Arnold’s developmentally challenged daughter, whom she never appears particularly fond of. This memoir refuses to pass judgment on their long and satisfying marriage and collaboration, honoring both the good and mulling over the questionable aspects.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A post-Me Too attempt at reevaluation of the author’s relationship with her husband. Back in 1996, when she published her first memoir, author Jill Ciment’s account of her marriage to artist Arnold Mesches was one of lifelong soulmates. But they met and became lovers in 1970 when she was a teenager with daddy issues and he was her 40-something married art teacher. The past being another country (one hopes, perhaps vainly), their relationship didn’t seem to be much cause for pause among those around them. And no wonder, given the atmosphere of the times - her description of life as a young female student at CalArts is harrowing, from the “what aroused you today?” discussion questions at the start of class to the naked massages from a prof.

One senses the careful, difficult interrogation Ciment’s engaged in here as she explores whether she really had the degree of agency she portrayed herself as having in her first memoir, and whether she was truly attracted to and in love with Arnold from such a young age, or just swept along by the romance and sexiness of the idea, while quelling any potential heebie-jeebies that might have been prompted by his loose neck flesh and close resemblance to her absent father. Over the years, even as she became middle-aged, she’d always be the “younger woman,” which shaped her experience of self in abiding ways. It’s evident that over the years as a couple, whatever the squickiness of their start, they built a fruitful mutual artistic partnership, and she also poignantly acknowledges his vulnerabilities as well. No easy answers, but important questions.

[Terry G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure of the point of this notably short memoir because to me she remained at a surface level, sharing with readers what I experienced as false introspection. Left me with a creepy feeling, and not just about her husband - also about her and her attitudes expressed about other family members, especially her husband's daughter. Issues she could have explored more deeply were left unexamined. Disappointing and oddly disturbing.

[Lisa of Hopewell · Rating 2 out of 5]

My Interest
I have long been fascinated by older man–younger woman relationships, but not the “Sugar Daddy” or “Trophy Wife” variety. But most of those occurred generations ago. President Grover Cleveland (may he ever remain our only president to serve non-consecutive terms) married his young ward at the White House. And the professor-student story is favorite to explore, too. I had a massive crush on one professor, but happily I was too socially award to be asked to express that crush.

Jill Ciment had a father who “lost it” in today’s parlance and so did I, though my Dad was “only” massively depressed. He did not leave us, remained a decent enough Dad for that day and brought home a good paycheck throughout. Thankfully, unlike Jill, I had a strong Mom and good big brother and caring relatives.

To read Jill’s new memoir, Consent, you almost need to back up and read at least the synopsis of her first memoir, Half a Life. Young Jill was not a normal high school girl like me, playing in the band, having a group of friends, having hobbies, and either escaping on my 10 speed bike or playing my classical, jazz, Beatles, or classical music in my room with the door locked when life got too much. She shared a bed with her mom. Not just a room–a bed. The former marital bed.

The Story
At 17, Jill sleeps with her art instructor. Then he leaves his wife and family for her and they manage to stay married for 40+ years. Fast-forward to today and #Metoo. She looks back at her relationship with her husband of 40+ years to see if she truly gave consent.

My Thoughts
Call me jaded but this book just reeks of needing to make money. WHY would any tell every graphic detail of your early sex life with your spouse? Why re-think a marriage you stayed in for 40+ years? Putting it all “through the lens of #metoo culture” and giving yourself “agency” to rethink and re-evaluate seems to me like morbid, self-indulgent, navel gazing. Money and awards are about the only reasons I can come up with. Being so explicit will get this nominated for all kinds of awards and it is being hyped a lot.

Arnold, her husband, objected at first, rightly saying she was too young. But, even though he had a wife he slept with and a mistress his own age that he slept with, he did not have the will power just end it with Jill right then and there and say “I’ll find you another teacher–this is too much for me.” Nope hopped right in the sack. And now Jill can’t really say if she made the first move or if he did??? WT??

Had all this happened to a 17 year old Jill bar hopping on a fake i.d. in a college town and hooking up with a 30-something grad student we’d never have heard about it. But this guy was an actual working, breathing, earning, artist of 47. And while the 70s were far more liberal than the past, only movie stars or groupies of some sort and some gold diggers were hooking up with men older than their parents. Jill ALSO knew this was wrong at the time, but thought it would help her as an “artist.” Women, sadly, still make moves like this to help their careers though not nearly as often thanks, in part, to #metoo.

I found this so memoir so difficult to endure I asked for my money back. The writing was fine. The vapid re-thinking of everything was too much.

[Kaleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable to read but it came off as—was—more of an addendum to/retread of/musing on her previous more in-depth memoir which I have not read, so I felt like there were important things I was missing. Kind of like a book two in a series, really.

[L. Alex A Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

She was 17 years old, a precocious art student. He was 47, her married art teacher, a father of two, and already a celebrated painter. Their marriage would last 45 years, ending with his death at age 93. But in Consent, Jill Ciment asks herself: Was this a love story? Or a story of exploitation? Does the happiness of a lifetime excuse the moral ambiguity of its beginning?

This was a slim but strikingly candid memoir — complex, questioning. Ciment reexamines her life and marriage through the lens of contemporary cultural awareness, her husband’s death, and the fallibility of memory. Consent, written in Ciment’s 70s, feels like a memoir that deconstructs the genre itself — unraveling the threads of memory from another of her memoirs — 1996's Half a Life, written in her 20s. Consent unfolds as both a personal reckoning and a dissection of Half a Life: where the earlier work cast her relationship with Arnold Mesches as transgressive but romantic, Consent fractures that initial story — openly interrogating her younger self’s narrative — questioning the rosy lens through which she framed moments like their first kiss and Arnold’s “support” of her talent. Was she truly the “sexual aggressor,” as she once believed, or was that a story she told herself to feel empowered in a relationship marked by a clear imbalance of power?

At its core, Consent is a memoir that scrutinizes itself, pulling passages from her earlier work and subjecting them to the unforgiving glare of hindsight. To me, the structure feels almost forensic at times, as Ciment wields her pen as a scalpel — a surgeon ready to excavate her past, a dissection of her younger self’s narrative. Ciment juxtaposes her present-day reflections with the younger voice of Half a Life, holding both versions in tension. In doing so, she doesn’t shy away from exploring how love, exploitation, and power can coexist — and how we retell our stories to ourselves to make sense of them.

And then there is memory. Some of my favorite memoirs have the added nuance of grappling with the unreliability of memory itself, something writing a memoir is unavoidably built upon. Ciment, too, asks whether truth is even possible in such deeply personal storytelling. She confronts inconsistencies in her own narrative: In Half a Life, she described herself as initiating their first kiss; in Consent, she confesses it was Arnold — the stolen kiss of her younger self takes on darker hues, charged with ambiguity. Was it seduction or coercion? Was Arnold’s encouragement of her artistic talent a genuine belief in her abilities — or a form of grooming by an older man preying on a vulnerable teenager? In Consent, those same scenes from her previous memoir crack under the weight of reinterpretation, revealing a marriage haunted by its origins, making the answers neither clear nor comforting.

This interplay between past and present is at the heart of Consent — Ciment is able to revisit her life with a clarity unavailable to her younger self, painting her marriage not as a triumph or tragedy, but as a canvas of contradictions.

In terms of the writing, Ciment’s prose is elegant but raw, her tone unwaveringly honest. She neither vilifies nor sanctifies Arnold — instead, she captures him as both mentor and predator, a man who adored her yet crossed ethical, unforgivable lines. The power of Consent lies in its refusal to resolve its central paradox. Was their marriage “fruit from the poisonous tree,” as she puts it, or proof that love and exploitation can coexist? Ciment refuses to banish or romanticize, and the inability to answer definitively makes her work deeply human yet haunting — existing in the spectral, liminal space between certainty and doubt.

Yes, haunting is the right word. My lasting impressions are not so much that I enjoyed reading it as much as I am haunted by the story — its lack of easy answers and its irresolvable truths, its questions that linger like the afterimage of a painting you can’t stop staring at. Consent leaves us with the reminder that love and memory are not absolutes — they are art forms we continually revise, as flawed and fragile as the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

[Carol]

If I were to begin my review with a quote, it would be the last lines of this reflection of a marriage. This would be a spoiler so I'll not write it here but will keep it in my copy of my thoughts about this memoir.

I'm not quite certain what I was expecting but knew from reviews that it would be a book I'd read. Kirkus Reviews called it a "A hot bullet of a memoir". Some, including the author stated it was a post MeToo evaluation, and many quoted the opening paragraph "What do I call him? My husband? Arnold? I would if the story were about how we met and married, shared meals for forty-five years, raised a puppy, endured illnesses. But if the story is about an older man preying on a teenager, shouldn’t I call him “the artist,” or better still, “the art teacher,” with all the word teacher implies?".

What I do know is that Jill Ciment's story took me back many years to my teens and the crushes myself and others had on our most handsome teachers, and other older men who took an interest in us. Would it have been acceptable if any of these were to kiss, fondle or meet us outside of the classroom leading to a sexual relationship? Would our age make a difference at all? 16, 17, 18 or possibly younger?

When Jill Ciment met Arnold, she was 16, he 47 and her art teacher. I could easily understand her attraction to him as she explained those years. Did I understand him? Not from my age today but would I have thought it wrong at 16? Would I have encouraged this relationship if it were mine?

A thought provoking book. I wanted to know more.
I think it would be helpful for me to read Half A Life.

I have read Ciment's The Body in Question. Though at the time I had a hard time with this book, reading Consent actually gives me some insight about her novel.
Quoting from the summary of said book "Suddenly they look at one another through an altogether different lens, as things become more complicated . . ." as did Jill Ciment in her latest memoir of her marriage to Arnold.

[alli☀️]

It is always hard to watch someone understand what happened to them in a relationship. In the 1970s, it was so normalized that older men groomed younger women/girls. No one told Jill it was wrong, and no one protected her. The hardest thing is that she still loved him but realized he was a gross older man who preyed on her.

There was a 30-year age gap. She was 17, and he was 47. She was his student. He had a daughter of Jill’s age.
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Short Synopsis
Jill Ciment is going back through her life when her husband died and realizes that maybe it is not okay for an older man to go after a minor, even if it was in the 1970s. She goes back through her other memoir, talking about their love story, but she is now looking at the words with an older mind and not the same young girl who wrote it.

[Cara Achterberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, provocatively thoughtful, this memoir was a surprise. I read it quickly, captivated by the writer's inquisitive voice delving into her own story -- I was curious alongside her to sort out why she did what she did. On the surface, it does seem sordid, but in the end it read like a true love story. It was definitely a peek back into a different time and often I found myself thinking this could never happen now (at least not legally). I didn't want to like the characters, and yet they charmed me. There is so much to discuss here beyond the story itself-- like the authenticity of the writer and how it changes with time. As your perspective shifts, so does your story.

[Beth Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

What’s grosser: sleeping with your under-age student or marrying your teacher, mining your decades-long marriage for literary fodder, and then waiting until he dies to write about what a decrepit creep your husband was? Ok yes, we all know which one is worse, but after reading this, maybe it’s even Stevens.

[Karen Witzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. A self-interrogation of youth, a previous memoir, then-and-now societal views of sex, the body, feminism, age-gap sexual relations, female-male sexual relations, and the Me Too movement.

[Stacy Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Consent is shocking. Hard to read without wincing at passages because it is impossible to see a relationship between a 17-year-old girl and her 47-year-old teacher (no matter that it resulted in a 45-year marriage) as anything other than gross. I hate the story. To be honest, I gagged in several places. What is interesting, however, and why I kept reading is not Climent’s reevaluation of the relationship post #MeToo but rather of the memoir she published in 1996 when her husband was still alive. This new memoir raises all kinds of interesting questions about how we rewrite our stories to accommodate new perspectives, changing social norms, and our shifting definitions of peace. Memoir is more about getting things real than getting them right. Climent obviously needed a do over, because that first memoir was a whitewash. But, in the end, I’m not sure she moved the needle all that much closer to real.

[Jazzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oddly cruel in regards to Arnold’s daughter? There’s another story there, I think.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t remember exactly how I heard of this, but the title would have snagged my attention regardless, so maybe it doesn’t matter. But I DID hear of it somewhere on social media, and that was enough for me to add it to my TBR, and then to snag a copy when it was available via audiobook, since it is very short.

Other than that, I knew nothing about it, or the author. I had not read her previous memoir. I have not read any of her other work. I have not seen any of her husband’s art. I am a completely blank slate. (Well, I was, going into this book, I mean.) I didn’t have any preconceived notions about what this would be about, or previous opinions from prior exposure to this couple or either of them individually.

And as such, I felt like I was listening to someone re-examine their life through a new lens, and it was quite interesting to me how it struck me as she was both honestly examining the nature and basis of her long relationship with a man 30 years her senior, and also vehemently protecting it. And I don’t mean protecting it in the “he wasn’t a groomer/I wasn’t a victim” sense, I mean protecting it as something cherished to her.

I don’t really know how to review this. I find the general idea of a man who is nearly 50 years old being in any kind of intimate relationship with a teenager deeply problematic. The power dynamic is heavily weighted to one end of that relationship (the older man), and even if he has nothing of actual monetary or tangible value (as was the case here), Ciment herself owns that he held power over her in her desire for his approval and desire for her. She, as a teenager, just didn’t have the life experience to really understand what she was getting into. And I think that that is so much of what this book seeks to reexamine - the origins of that relationship and whether it was as she had cast it in her mind, and whether it was something that she could have even understood back then. But despite that, it still ended up being something that brought her joy and fulfillment, even while it brought loss and hardship in other ways.

I can’t condone this type of relationship, obviously, but nor will I judge her for hers. She wasn’t trapped or manipulated, and by her own account she chose him, and continued to choose him, for well over 40 years.

I did find this quite interesting and compelling to listen to, and even though I am not an art person at all, I appreciated the way she talked about art, and how their being artists impacted and informed their lives and life together. I did quite like the way that they collaborated and shared their work with each other and how that created a sort of openness in their relationship that seemed to work well for them.

[Madalyn (Novel Ink) · Rating 4 out of 5]

honest, emotional, reflective, and nuanced. i’ve never read a memoir quite like this one, but i think this story is really important and i’m glad the author decided to tell it.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

|| CONSENT ||
•
"Sometimes a writer gets stuck because she is at a loss as to what comes next. Sometimes a writer knows too much about what comes next and is paralyzed by her own puny prophecies. I was both."
•
"Some writers her voices dictating to them, others spy on their fellow mortals through a keyhole, while still others, like myself, worm into their protagonist's mind to stand sentury at the door of consciousness. How do I convey yearning for a kiss well at the same time acknowledge the predatory act of an older man kissing a teenager? Perhaps had I been the type of writer who peeked at her characters through the keyhole, I would have seen a middle-aged man kissing an underaged girl. I might have been repelled by what I saw and written a different scene. But I was inside the girl, yearning for the kiss. I had intended to write the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but I could not find it, or else I found it everywhere."
•
"The point of view and a memoir is curious. The writer must trick the reader and yourself into believing that she actually remembers so she felt decades ago. And then bar is closer to historical fiction than it is to biography. And as with historical fiction the reader often learns more about the period in which the book was written and then the period that is being written about."
•
"Should I be calling it our affair? Wasn't it his affair? When a seventeen-year-old dated someone exclusive in those days---it was still 1970 until midnight---she wasn't having an affair; she was going steady."
✍🏻
What a facinating, provocative, beautifully written memoir that explores memory, stories we tell ourselves, May-December relationships in a post MeToo world, art and love. How have I not read Ciment before?! Highly recommend!.


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[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started out as a very interesting reexamination of the author's relationship with her husband, whom she met when she was 17 and he 47. But after the initial analysis it falls flat and is just about the rest of his life ... no more talk of consent.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disconcerting on multiple issues: from the topics of consent and gender relations, to the healthy dose of selfishness displayed at times. Uncertain what to think. Competently written.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm. It’s hard to know exactly how to feel about this short but impactful memoir.

Jill Ciment reflects on her marriage to a much older artist she met when she was sixteen and he was 47, married with two kids her age. This is her second memoir about her life and relationship, written with a new perspective, post Me-Too and without the collaboration and gaze of her husband reading her reflections and editing her version of events.

On the one hand it feels overly indulgent to write two memoirs about the same thing, and not come away with something concrete and convincing. The name of the book is Consent but it doesn’t feel like she really tackles the theme.

Ciment wonders if there was anything darker or sick lurking in the story of her “seduction” of him but hangs her narrative on the free-love of the 70s and her own rebellious and independent spirit, painting a love story that’s main issue isn’t in the unbalanced element of power but in whether she can stomach his physical body aging and societal judgement, which she can, easily, and they have a happy 45-year marriage until he dies in his 90s.

And yet, it feels like we’re still hearing all this from the perspective of the teenager who refuses to admit there’s a problem at all. Almost as if her ability to really interrogate this relationship arrested at the age they met. She keeps asking questions—was he grooming her, was he preying on a fatherless girl, was he a succubus feeding off her youth and vitality…but she doesn’t really answer these, only seems to turn away—dismissive. The idea that a seventeen year old, not fully grown, without a wholly developed brain could be the driver of this relationship honestly just feels a little silly to me. The answer feels obvious and the way she wants to explain it away just really sad.

I feel like this is a common view of that generation’s inability to see these May-December relationships as problematic as they are.

The scene where she talks about her little brother’s abuse and the way the police react to realizing she’s with her husband not her mother—feels like the closest she comes to a kind of realization but then it’s over.

So often we’re left to read into scenes the discomfort but she won’t come out and say it.

I dunno. Very compelling read, lots to think about.