Author(s): Vanessa Springora; Natasha Lehrer (Translator)

Gender & Sexuality

The devastating and powerful memoir from a French publisher who was abused by a famous writer from the age of thirteen.

'A gut-punch of a memoir with prose that cuts like a knife' Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of My Dark Vanessa

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.

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

"...One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. [...]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch." -- The New Yorker

"Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity." -- The Times (London)

"[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways." -- Slate

"Lucid and nuanced...[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere." -- Los Angeles Review of Books

"A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer...This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned." -- Publishers Weekly

"Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation." -- Booklist

"A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way...[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer." -- Kirkus

Review: "Consent is that elegantly laid trap, a memoir that asks sharp questions about desire, literature, and a culture that fetishizes female youth and inexperience over female art. "--The Paris Review
Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity.--The Times (London)
"Consent is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph."--New York Times
[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways.--Slate
[Consent] is really about power; who we give it to, and where it should be curtailed. It is also about correcting an imbalance.--Sunday Times (London)
Even if he is acquitted, Springora has managed to exact some revenge by capturing G, and all of his terrible behavior, forever in these erudite, incriminating pages.--New York Journal of Books
Lucid and nuanced...[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere. --Los Angeles Times Book Review
...One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. [...]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch.--The New Yorker
A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way...[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer.--Kirkus Reviews
A fierce account from a woman hoping to wrest her story back. Recommended Reading.--Library Journal
Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation.--Booklist
"A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer...This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned." --Publishers Weekly
"By coldly dismantling the mechanism, the cogs and the collusions, Vanessa Springora transcends the personal framework and questions society as a whole. In this, Consent is a book that counts, far beyond testimony." --Nicole Grudlinger


"The story delivered is reminiscent of that of a pact with the devil and the reference to fairy tales (Bluebeard in particular) highlights the importance of the theme of sexual predator in literature, including children's literature. Love must be there in wonder; in the case of the sexual predator, the stupor is not that of joy but that of Evil. To write it is to exorcise it, in the strong sense; to receive this testimony is to accompany this disenchantment and to get out of the state of torpor in which conformism, indifference or complacency always threaten to plunge us." --Elodie Pinel, La Revue Etudes

Author Biography: Vanessa Springora is a French writer and editor. Consent is her first book.