Consent

Annabel (Author) Lyon Press Reviews

Consent might be closest to Lyon's earlier work in short fiction, which earned her comparisons to fellow-Canadian fiction writer Alice Munro. Lyon...also manages to break new ground by blending her short fiction with aspects of the thriller novel, and harkening back to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. But in Consent, we get a chance to hear the women's side of the story, as Lyon beautifully interweaves the stories of two sets of sisters, Saskia and Jenny, alongside Sara and Mattie. The two through-lines collide, setting in motion a chain of events that races to the finish. - Chicago Review of Books

Beyond that loaded title is a novel of quiet moments that together build to a dramatic crescendo. The stories of two pairs of diametrically opposed sisters - Sara, an academic, and Mattie, who lives with a learning disability; and twins Saskia, the wallflower, and Jenny, the magnetic It girl - resist connecting until late in the game. But when they do, the results are as shocking as the ancient Greek canon that Lyon has long mined for inspiration. - Quill and Quire

From the author of The Golden Mean, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, Consent is about Sara who, after forcing an annulment of what Sara sees as a hasty marriage to a man targeting an inheritance, becomes a caregiver to her intellectually challenged sister, Mattie. After a tragedy, their lives converge with the second set of sisters. Saskia has put her life on hold to be caregiver for her twin, Jenny, who has been severely injured in an accident. The intersection of the stories, says Steven Beattie in the Quill and Quire, comes as a shock. - The Millions

This novel captivates in plot... It follows two sets of sisters whose lives converge and diverge in eerily similar ways. - Entertainment Weekly

This tightly and beautifully written novel folds time and longing into every sentence and every page. It takes risks with form to reveal a profoundly human story, and it leaves us with an unexpected sensation: that this is real life - it contains all kinds of deep and difficult loves, and not all of us can survive them. It's a brave, even dangerous book and so compelling that I read it from cover to cover over the course of one night. - Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young

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

Mesmerizing... An intense, intimate novel of love, grief, and murder [with] a deliciously dark conclusion. - Publishers Weekly

Combining ethical dilemmas with material indulgence, Consent is a heady, intoxicating blend. In slick and sensual prose, Lyon challenges what it means to be a sister, a carer, an addict, an enabler and maybe even a murderer. - Ruth Gilligan, author of THE BUTCHERS

This generation's answer to Alice Munro - Vancouver Sun

Potently elegiac . . . Lyon shows with chilling precision just how quickly a life can unravel . . . She has a knack for intrigue, the sizzle behind seemingly ordinary remarks, and she uses this to great effect. - Guardian on Annabel Lyon

Conjures a pungent, raucous world -- Francesca Wade - TLS, on Annabel Lyon

Beguiling and rewarding - Irish Examiner, on Annabel Lyon

Confounds expectations - Observer, on Annabel Lyon

Extremely skilful - Financial Times, on Annabel Lyon

Quietly ambitious and beautifully achieved. - Hilary Mantel, on Annabel Lyon