Consent

De: Annabel Lyon

Narrado por: Alison Matthews

A smart, mysterious and heartbreaking novel centered 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.

©2020 Annabel Lyon (P)2020 Random House Canada

Reseñas de la Crítica

2021, BC Book Prize's Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize

2020, Scotiabank Giller Prize

2021, Women's Prize for Fiction

“Mesmerizing ... An intense, intimate novel of love, grief, and murder [with] a deliciously dark conclusion ... Perfectly captures the odd mix of love and resentment faced by caregivers.” (Publishers Weekly)

“[A] short, intense, and coruscating book.... [Lyon] packs more into her sentences than most writers working today and constructs a narrative that closes on the reader like a mousetrap. And like any good mousetrap, by the time its victim realizes they’ve stumbled, it’s too late.” (Quill & Quire)

“A genuinely surprising read, rooted in a keen, if unsettling, understanding of human nature ... Consent defies conventional narrative, embracing instead a sense of emotional time . . . This is, after all, how we think and feel, how families and relationships develop and age, how we grow. Life, Lyon shows, isn’t a straight line.” (Robert J. Wiersema, Toronto Star)