Consent by Vanessa Springora

There are quite a few layers of shocking and horrible events in this compact memoir of a woman who was stalked and seduced as a 13 year old by an author of some renown who was more than three times her age at the time. I read it because it was one of several books that an article I read in The Economist recommended as a way to understand modern France. The first thing that is a bit shocking is that young girls are not better protected from predators in France. The age of consent is 15 years old, which this girl was younger than, but it does seem fairly tilted in favor older and much older men taking advantage. Then there is the response to the author himself. In 1990 Gabriel Matzneff is a guest on Bernard Pivot’s influential literary TV chat show Apostrophes to discuss his recently published memoir, about his sexual conquests of very young women. The only person present to take exception to Matzneff’s comments is the Canadian novelist Denise Bombardier, and she is then mocked left and right in the press and a few days later the writer and critic Philippe Sollers calls her a bitch on television. Then comes this, a very explicit and detailed account of Matzneff's largely sexual relationship with a girl, and the gradual dawning that she undergoes as a teenager, and then as a more seasoned adult of what exactly happened, and how it was not just tolerated but accepted, as well as being widely known. She touches upon his abuse of much younger, pre-pubescent boys as well. Even in the wake of the #MeToo and what we have come to know were common practices of powerful men sexually exploiting women, this is still hard to read.