Vanessa Springora: Le Consentement (2020)

The subject of paedophilia isn't unusual in French literature, and apart from the obvious Henry de Montherlant, Roger Peyrefitte and Tony Duvert there have been four relatively recent books written by the younger person involved. There was Christophe Tison's Il m'aimait (2004), in which Tison describes the abuse he willingly underwent by a cultivated man, and although he had to go through psychotherapy afterwards, he refuses to give the man's name because of the cultural benefits he gained from the relationship. For several years as an adolescent Nathalie Rheims had a somewhat restrained relationship with 'Pierre' (Jacques Toja of the Comédie-Française), and Place Colette (2015) is a part fictionalised version of it, in which there is no criticism of Toja. This is very far removed from Flavie Flament's La Consolation (2016), in which Flament reveals her rape by photographer David Hamilton, who also underwent psychotherapy as a result of his abuse of her, although much to her chagrin Hamilton killed himself shortly after the publication: he had opted out of suffering.

In a number of his books, perhaps particularly in Les Moins de seize ans (1974), Gabriel Matzneff has advocated paedophilia, and frequently openly voiced his love of underage girls. One notorious example is in an extraordinary clip from an Apostrophes programme in 1990, headed by Bernard Pivot, who recently resigned from being head of the Académie Goncourt. The clip is extraordinary in that there is almost complete acceptance of Matzneff's paedophilia, apart from the strong objection to the tenor of the conversation by Québecoise writer Denise Bombadier. How could Pivot treat such a subject so flippantly, many asked on social media, as Pivot's reaction to the clip is astounding: he evoked a different era, a time when literature came before morals, and a little later – equally pathetically – said that he just couldn't find the words. In 1990?

In 2011 Frédéric Beigbeder, in Premier bilan après l'apocalypse, which is a list of Beigbeder's favourite one hundred books mainly from 1950 through to the date of his book, he lists Matzneff's Ivre du vin perdu at number 16. According to Beigbeder, 'il faut séparer l'art de la loi' ('we must separate art from the law'). He goes on to say: 'Tant qu'on ne me prouvera pas que Matzneff est Marc Dutroux, alors qu'on lui flanque la paix' ('As long as it's not proved to me that Matzneff is Marc Dutroux [the serial paedphile killer] then leave him be'). Number 84 on Beigbeder's list is Roland Jaccard's Une fille pour l'été (2000). Jaccard is a great friend of Matzneff's ('almost a brother'), and following the attacks on Matzneff by his former adolescent 'lover' Vanessa Springora in Le Consentement (2020) has posted a number of times on his own blog, mentioning the Piscine Deligny ('lieu mythique du glamour et du sexe') ('mythical place of glamour and sex'). He adds: 'Gabriel y emmenait Vanessa Springora, une lycéenne de 14 ans. Celle par qui trente-cinq ans plus tard le scandale allait arriver. Depuis, Gabriel s’est réfugié en Italie, je reçois des menaces de mort. Après le Paradis, l’Enfer. Je suis consterné.' ('Gabriel took Vanessa Springora, a 14-year-old lycéecenne, there. It's because of her that this scandal happened thirty-five years later. Since then, Gabriel has taken refuge in Italy, I have received death threats. After Paradise, Hell. I am staggered.' Poor Matznezz, poor Jaccard.

Since Vanessa Springora's explosive book, which is a bestseller, Beigbeder has revealed he is 'horriblement coupable' ('horrendously guilty') for his part in giving Matzneff the Renaudot essai prize in 2013: he says he thought the man was a fantasist, which is frankly unbelievable: over decades, Matzneff has never hidden his sexual preferences, frequently detailing examples of paedophilia in the history of the world, as if to give his own paedophilia authenticity.

And as for the book itself, yes, it is explosive, although there is nothing graphic in it, just the truth as Vanessa Springora sees it. There are very few names here, Vanessa is just 'V', Gabriel Matneff is just 'G', etc. Vanessa comes from a broken home in which her parents were constantly arguing, but she's intellectually very curious, and at at the end of her thirteenth year sees Matzneff interested in her, and in spite of her mother calling him a paedophile succumbs to the sexual temptations of a fifty-year-old man at fourteen. The sex initially is anal as she has to have an operation on her impenetrable hymen, but it continues for many months, with her mother's knowledge. Vanessa thinks it's love, but things will prove otherwise.

When Vanessa seeks to read one of Matzneff's books, the bookshop employee directs her to a 'safer' book of his, and the first sentence mentions 16 March 1972, the exact date when she was born: it must be a message rather than a coincidence. The relationship continues, Vanessa skips school to be with her lover, and the end is inevitable. Vanessa sees Matzneff in a café with another young girl when he had told her that he was going to a book-signing in Belgium. And then Vanessa reads what Matzneff has written, his trips to the Philippines to fuck young boys, etc. When she leaves him she goes to Cioran (also a friend of Matzneff and Jaccard from the Piscine Deligny), but he too puts literature before morality.

Slowly, through severe mental trauma and help from true friends, Vanessa Springora comes through, and Le Consentement is an exorcism of Gabriel Matzneff, an affirmation of her life, and her book will be hugely powerful as a weapon against all sexual predators who deprive their victims of their youth.