'Consent' Is One of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

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In 1970, at the age of 17, Jill Ciment began a relationship with painter Arnold Mesches, a married father of two who was 30 years her senior. In her 1996 memoir, Half a Life, she wrote extensively of their happy, nearly half-century-long marriage, which lasted until Mesches’ death at the age of 93 in 2016. But with Consent, Ciment reevaluates the story of their May-December romance through the lens of the MeToo movement. In her previous memoir, she cast herself as the “sexual aggressor,” but she now realizes it was Mesches who helped her come to that conclusion. This discovery leaves her wondering whether she ever had the power to consent to their first kiss. The question drives her to reconsider her husband, herself, and their love affair, offering an unflinching investigation into the stories we tell ourselves.

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