Book Review
Rating *
Author: Jill Ciment
Published: published in 2024; I listened to the audiobook (Books on Tape; read by Eileen Stevens; 4 hours)
What is the story?
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 read for women of all ages.--from Amazon.com
What type of language does it use—technical, complex, standard, or colloquial? primarily standard, some technical (a background in art would help)
Does the level of language make it easy or difficult for the reader to follow? it reads (listens) like a confession, with occasional forays into art
Did you like this book? Not at all.
If you could change something, what would it be? a wise person once told me that personal disclosure creates a burden on the person receiving it, and this book is an excellent example. I was recommended this book by an article about unreliable narrators. This concept intrigues me—see, e.g., my adoration of Henry Fool—but has inherent flaws, and (for me) is intolerable in nonfiction. If I'm reading "a true story," why would I seek out one that lies on purpose?
What were your favourite parts? it wasn't quite a car-crash, but the combined revulsion and fascination are somewhat akin to that.
Did you like the characters? no
What is your recommendation? I can't recommend this book. Ciment's claim to fame is that she hooked up with a married 40-something when she was a teen, and later married him. She's not an artist, and he was not a famous one. She's written two memoirs to cash in on that big sin and that man, and in this second one she has the audacity to wonder whether he took advantage of her. Along the way, she also wrings some titillation value from her parents, a brother, a stepdaughter, and a couple of other characters, without fleshing any of them out into knowable people.
Ciment is not a bad writer, but neither is she a good one. There are no conclusions here about the main point of the book: whether Arnold was the villain in the piece. However, it's filled with pointless declarations about side issues—'all May/December relationships are [adjective]'; 'every older man looks for [activity] from a younger woman'—and otherwise wishywashy on fact and analysis. She's not a psychologist, she's not an artist, and she's worked her trade on the backs of others (and now a social movement concerning actual victims of sexual violence). Why should we care about this self-absorbed woman?
5 adjectives you would use to describe this text: meaningless, arrogant, repetitive, dismissive, frustrating
[book review template 5 adapted from here; the title quotation is attributed to George Bernard Shaw]
So what did you really think?? 😬
ReplyDelete"Did you like this book?" "Not at all."
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