Consent

November 30, 2020
French publishing executive Springora debuts with a piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer. In the process, she condemns the literary enclaves of 1970s and ’80s France that she says elevated the predatory needs of artists above the safety of children: “We have witnessed only Catholic priests being bestowed such a level of impunity.” Referring to herself as “V,” the nickname given to her by “G” in his published work, Springora recounts how she met G through her mother, who worked in publishing. The pair found each other captivating, and over the course of a year, Springora turned “from a muse into a fictional character,” as G portrayed himself to the public as a mentor rather than a pedophile and a sexual predator. (He also, she writes, paid for sex with 11-year-old boys.) Springora was haunted by the experience into her adulthood and to the point of a psychotic breakdown, when she wondered, “How is it possible to acknowledge having been abused, when it’s impossible to deny having consented?” In elegant prose, Springora corrects G’s fictions of “mentorship” in telling her story while shedding light on the devastating aftermath. This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.

December 1, 2020
Why did French literati stay silent when a prominent writer preyed on the author and other underage victims in Paris in the 1980s? Springora, a French writer and editor, has sparked a fierce debate in France with accounts of sexual abuse that differ from similar accusations against Bill Cosby, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein: On the evidence of this book, the perpetrator did not slip drugs into her drinks, have an accomplice recruit her, or threaten to harm her future career. The author writes that after they met at a dinner party, the almost 50-year-old man she calls G.--outed by the media as Gabriel Matzneff--stalked and seduced her when she was 14 and that the abuse continued after anonymous letters tipped off the police. Springora believes she fell prey to his seductions in part because her father had abandoned her after her parents separated, and her mother sympathized with a slogan of the May 1968 radicals, "It's forbidden to forbid," a then-popular idea that may also help to explain the inaction of French intellectuals who knew of Matzneff's relations with minors. The author grew disillusioned, however, after learning that Matzneff had abused others her age and written about it in his books and published diaries. "For his readers, it was merely a story, words," she writes. "For me, it was the beginning of a breakdown." Though Springora advances an intriguing theory about who wrote the anonymous letters, she offers little proof. But she is an elegant and perceptive writer whose austere prose resembles that of her compatriot Annie Ernaux. Springora notes that she still suffers from depression caused by the relationship, but she may get the last word: French authorities have charged Matzneff with promoting pedophilia, and he is scheduled to stand trial in 2021. A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way.

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January 8, 2021

Springora created an upheaval in France in 2019 when she published her account of her affair with writer Gabriel Matzneff. She was 14 at the time, and he was 50. Her father was out of the picture and her mother was distracted, pursuing her own affairs. The effects of the May '68 countercultural revolutions still reverberated. Artistic freedom was inviolable and writers were given a great deal of license, perhaps none more so than Matzneff. His oeuvre was largely comprised of his personal diaries and thinly disguised fiction, in which letters from his besotted teenaged lovers were printed verbatim. Springora fell under his spell. Matzneff isolated her from her peers and school; she spent her days in his bed and under his tutelage. She eventually broke away; his profligacy with other vulnerable young girls and periodic trips to Manila to procure prepubescent boys alarmed her. In the wake of the affair, she felt damaged and used, with her self-esteem in tatters and her privacy violated. VERDICT Springora widens her scope to indict not only Matzneff, but the French cultural elite that so readily enables and excuses his behavior. A fierce account from a woman hoping to wrest her story back. Recommended reading.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

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January 1, 2021
When French writer and editor Springora was 14 in the 1980s, her relationship with celebrated author G., then nearly 50, was an open secret among close family and friends. Less of a secret was G.'s boasting preference for teenage girls and even younger boys, which he wrote about in his literature and spoke of on television. Springora's memoir, which precipitated a reckoning when it was published in France last year, brings to light G.'s abusive grooming and manipulation of her and considers the social-intellectual mores of the era that left her unknowing prey to it. Her damning, measured recollection reveals both what she felt at the time and what she came to understand in the intervening years. When she gives into the suspicion that the flouting of convention she believes she's party to is something much more sinister, she finds ""the poison"" in G.'s own published books. Later, she is a character in his work, a shattering experience. Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation.

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