The main reason I picked this book up was that it was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year, and it was one of the few books on the list available in audiobook format from my local library. I didn’t really know anything about it going in, and there were a few surprises. But let’s start at the beginning.
I nearly didn’t write a review of this book. I guess I’ll start with this: this book is dark. And I mean dark. It focuses on two sets of sisters who are connected – both by tragedy and by unforeseen circumstances. The first sisters are a set of twins. Completely different – Jenny is extroverted and vivacious, Saskia is quiet and studious. Then Jenny is in a horrific accident and and ends up in hospital. When she’s out of the house, secrets begin to emerge. Saskia has to face how little she really knows about her sister, and in the process she learns that she has a side she’s never explored.
Our second set of sisters are older sister Sara and younger sister Mattie. Sara has no interest in retaining a physical presence in her childhood home. She leaves behind her mother and developmentally challenged sister, Mattie, with a mind to move on completely. But circumstance forces her to return and take over care of Mattie. She is temperamentally and experientially unsuited to being a surrogate mother figure. Tragedy finds them, too, and soon Sara is left to deal with a tragedy she didn’t know to be afraid of, and that she has no idea how to get past.
The main theme of this book is tragedy. How it occurs, the pain it causes, the ripples it sends out into the world and where they land. It explores what happens to people when the blows they are dealt by life prove to be more than they can recover from. The pain that can be there, ever-present, just under the surface of someone who seems to have it all together. People are resilient. We can learn to live with all kinds of impossible things, and we can find joy and hope when there is little to find it in. But there are limits to our resilience and ability to heal, and this book explores what comes after reaching those limits.
This book was a weird read for me. Partly because it’s just a difficult book. But also because, unbeknownst to me, it takes place not only in the city I live in, but in part in a building I used to live in. I’ve never encountered a former building of mine in a book, and given that it’s also such a disturbing storyline, it was very weird to read!
I didn’t love this book – not because it’s not good, but because I had a hard time feeling my way into it. It’s a confronting read, and it makes you look at parts of the human condition we usually shy away from. It thrives in contradiction and in the spaces where people can be both successful and profoundly messy, where people can be seen as evil when they’re really just damaged in ways that make them unable to function in society. In this book, the victims become the perpetrators and vice versa, love becomes dangerous, danger is secretly trying to do good. I’ve had a hard time figuring out how I feel about this book, but at the end of the day it certainly gave me a lot to think about and forced me to consider perspectives I previously hadn’t in this way. I think readers who enjoy a challenge in what they read, particularly those who also enjoy complex and difficult relationships, will find a lot to engage with in this book. It’s certainly not for everyone, and it’s not my favourite read of the year, but I’m glad I gave it a try – even if it did end up being (literally) close to home!
A smart, mysterious and heartbreaking novel centred on two sets of sisters whose lives are braided together when tragedy changes them forever. From the award-winning author of The Golden Mean.
Saskia and Jenny are twins who are alike only in appearance. Saskia is a hard-working grad student whose interests are solely academic, while Jenny, an interior designer, is glamourous, thrill-seeking, capricious and narcissistic. Still, when Jenny is severely injured in an accident, Saskia puts her life on hold to be with her sister.
Sara and Mattie are sisters with a difficult relationship. Mattie, the younger sister, is affectionate, curious and intellectually disabled. As soon as Sara is able, she leaves home, in pursuit of a life of the mind and the body: she loves nothing more than fine wines, sensual perfumes, and expensive clothing. But when their mother dies, Sara inherits the duty of caring for her sister. Arriving at the house one day, she finds out that Mattie has married Robert, her wealthy mother’s handyman. Though Mattie seems happy, Sara cannot let this go, forcing the annulment of the marriage and the banishment of Robert. With him out of the picture, though, she has no choice but to become her sister’s keeper, sacrificing her own happiness and Mattie’s too. When Robert turns up again, another tragedy happens. The waves from these events eventually engulf Sara and Saskia, sisters in mourning, in a quest for revenge.
Consent is a startling, moving, thought-provoking novel on the complexities of familial duty and on how love can become entangled with guilt, resentment and regret.– Goordreads
Book Title: Consent
Editor: Annabel Lyon
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: Random House Canada
Released: September 29, 2020
Genre: Fiction, Family, Relationships, Tragedy
Pages: 224
Date Read: May 16-20, 2021
Rating: 5/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.54/5 (1,846 ratings)