"Consent" by Vanessa Springora

Consent is a French memoir by Vanessa Springora, recounting the sexual relationship she had with G.M., a famous French writer much her senior, beginning when Springora was fourteen. Springora recounts the grooming process by which G.M. lured her into a relationship and the methods he used to prey on a young girl desperate for a man's affection. Even though G.M. was a known pedophile and had written at length about his relationships with minors, no one in Springora's life--including her mother--took steps to prevent or end the relationship. Though Springora was eventually able to sever the relationship herself, she was stalked and haunted by G.M. for years, particularly because he continued to write about her in "fiction" form for decades.

According to the press I read, the memoir caused a sensation in France, where it finally resulted in G.M.'s (Gabriel Matzneff) long-due fall from grace. The obvious question: what the hell took so long?

That central question guides Springora's approach to the memoir. She begins by explaining some of the context that made relationships with minors "acceptable" by the time she was a teenager in the 1980s. The sexual revolution worked (appropriately) to de-stigmatize sex, but that free spirit soon extended to de-stigmatizing all sex, ignoring the way unbalanced power structures can apply to consent.* G.M.'s celebrity allowed him to continue his behavior for years. Springora recounts a now-famous TV roundtable where one guest--a Canadian woman--called G.M. out for his pedophilia. No one came to her support. Instead, the assumption was that there was something "special" about being chosen by G.M. He was famous and smart. He coerced through promises of love and manipulation of teenage insecurities, not through threats and violence.

All of this backstory forms the occasion around which Springora sat down to write her book. So what does she do? Bring him down as forcefully, as powerfully, as convincingly as she can. Wrote the New York Times review that made me pick up the book: "'Consent' is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury."

The memoir is not concerned much with Springora as an individual. In fact, as a reader, I wanted more of her--who was she when alone, or in school, or with friends? What else was happening in her life? But recalling her life in whole is not Springora's rhetorical purpose. Instead, the memoir is tightly and completely focused on her relationship with G.M. and the predatory ways he hunted her and continued to destroy her life. 

Unfortunately, at this point, we've heard many stories of rape and sexual abuse. It can feel salacious to read a book that covers the visceral details of sex between a 14-year-old girl and a 50-year-old man. Yet, after reading the book, I can understand and admire Springora for writing the book that she did. And it worked.

*I'm reading a collection of essays by Joan Didion, and in one she recounts a famous director inviting her to summer in France; she's unable to, but her 14-year-old daughter consents, and Didion joyfully recounts finding her daughter weeks later, topless on the beach and being courted by several Italian men. This adventure might have been an entirely positive experience for her daughter, but it reminded me of an attitude that led to tragedies like Springora's.