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• Louise O'Neill Home Page - http://www.louiseoneillauthor.com/biography/

  Louise O’ Neill is an author and a weekly columnist with the Irish Examiner. Her debut novel, Only Ever Yours, won multiple awards and is currently being adapted for screen by Killer Films. Her second novel, Asking For It, was a number 1 bestseller and was named the overall Book of The Year at the Irish Book Awards 2015. Bandit Television have acquired the TV rights. She is also the presenter of the upcoming Asking For It, an RTE documentary about rape culture in Ireland.

• Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/sep/02/louise-oneill-asking-for-it-interview

  Louise O'Neill: 'I think this book will infuriate a lot of people because it’s going to push those buttons'
  Louise O’Neill’s first book Only Ever Yours took the YA world by storm and now she’s back with a second, Asking for It, about rape culture. Teen site member Patrick Sproull caught up with her during Yalc 2015 to ask about her reasons for writing the book, how she went about researching it and what we can expect next…

  Also read Louise O’Neill: Why I explore rape culture in my new book for teens

  Louise O'Neill
  Louise O’Neill: Girls are constantly taught ‘don’t get raped’ but boys aren’t taught not to rape and I think the problem is that there’s such a pressure on boys to lose their virginity, to have sex, to have loads of sexual partners, that they sort of push things as hard and as fast as they can… it’s blurred lines. Photograph: Anna Groniecka/PR
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  Patrick Sproull
  Wednesday 2 September 2015 07.00 EDT Last modified on Monday 6 February 2017 09.53 EST

  No hyperbole here but Louise O’Neill is the best YA fiction writer alive today. Patrick Ness, Malorie Blackman and John Green are all exceptional authors, producers of the finest YA books in recent years, but none of them match up to Louise O’Neill.

  Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill
  Her first novel, Only Ever Yours, was lauded from every corner of the literary world as an astonishing piece of feminist fiction. She was compared to Margaret Atwood and praised by the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Marian Keyes, while five-star reviews popped up across the web. O’Neill is different because she is refreshingly honest in her writing, skewering modern concepts of beauty, objectification and patriarchy. Her books are also pleasingly adult (so much so that her first book was recently re-released as an adult novel) and it’s heartening to see a YA writer who treats their readers so maturely.

  Suffice to say, then, that a not-inconsiderable weight of expectation has been heaped onto O’Neill for her second novel, Asking for It. We met at the Young Adult Literature Convention (Yalc) in July to discuss the book, and O’Neill was everything I expected her to be: thoughtful, mightily intelligent and thoroughly engaging company.

  Asking for It is about a teenage Irish girl who is raped at a party and the book chronicles the fallout from that act. It’s a devastating novel: a genuinely heartbreaking, sickening and truthful examination of society’s penchant for victim-blaming, its treatment of women and the concept of rape culture. Something I told O’Neill when we met was that I read Asking for It on a train and got travel sick – and I never get travel sick.

  Despite the anticipation, Louise O’Neill was able to disregard the hype. “I signed a two book deal with Quercus and I said, ‘I’m going to have a first draft of the second novel written before Only Ever Yours comes out’. I felt like, if it was well received I was going to be busy and if it was badly received then it would be really hard to go back and sit down with Asking for It,” she says to me in the bustling Yalc green-room.

  “There is pressure and I know that some people are going to like it and some people will say, ‘no, I prefer the dystopian novel’ but I can’t control that. The only thing I can control is that I want to write the book that I feel I have to write. This is what Asking for It is. Obviously, it’s really nice to get good reviews and it’s really nice when people respond to your work, but again, it’s out of my control. As I said, I really hope that people respond to it in the same way – fingers crossed.”

  Asking for it by Louise O'Neill
  I tell O’Neill that few YA authors today could write Asking for It, not least because it’s so emotionally draining, but also because many writers wouldn’t touch the subject of rape with a bargepole. “Yeah, I will admit that and sometimes I think it sounds a bit indulgent to say, ‘oh, you know I found this book quite hard to write’ but I did,” she says. “Asking for It was a harrowing book to write; I felt completely depleted when it was finished and a lot of that was the reading I had to do around it and the research I had to do, meeting people who were victims of rape and having to interview them. I was having constant nightmares where I was raped and I think because I was so entrenched in it…” She breaks off.

  I ask O’Neill to guide me through her research. “Well, it started off actually when I was researching Only Ever Yours because with Only Ever Yours, it wasn’t so much research, it was reading the Vagenda and Jezebel and all those kind of blogs. Rape culture was something that I was really fascinated by and I wanted to explore it more in Only Ever Yours but I didn’t want to overload the narrative with too many issues.

  “I came across two different cases – the Steubenville case and the Maryville case in the US – which were very similar in that they were small towns in the US in which the football team were the local heroes, and at a party the two young girls in both cases passed out and were gang-raped by members of the team. And in general the local community really rallied round the men rather than the victims. I was so interested in this and also by the fact, especially with the Steubenville case, that they took videos and photographs and posted them on Twitter and YouTube and Facebook without any sort of concept that that is public and what they’ve done is illegal.

  Louise O'Neill: Sometimes we become so accustomed to the world we live in that we fail to see the problems in it
  Read more
  “Obviously, there are the moral implications of it but also the fact that it was illegal and there could be consequences. I was really interested by that mindset and having grown up in a small town I wanted to transplant that into an Irish context, so after doing a lot of reading around those cases I visited the Rape Crisis Centre in Cork and I interviewed Mary Crilly, who gave me a few booklets on the law in Ireland and different statistics around rape. I also spoke to a number of people who had been raped and then as well as that, when I was finished, I got Mary Crilly and a lawyer to read it, someone who specialises in rape cases in Dublin, just to make sure I hadn’t made grave, stupid mistakes.”

  Would Asking for It have panned out the same way if it had been set in a city? O’Neill hesitates. “I don’t know,” she says. “I suppose the reason why I put it in a small town context was because there was those two cases in America in a small town and I could see the correlations between small town life and jock culture, and how those two translated to my own small town. Not to the same extreme, but I just think it was something I was really familiar with and that really interested me.

  “You know,” she says, changing her mind. “It probably would have been similar. I mean, there are cases in Dublin and in London as well where victim-blaming occurs. I just felt it was so interesting because it was a small community and that’s a microcosm.”

  Asking for It did feel slightly, to me, like an indictment of small-town life and hive mind communities. O’Neill understands and is extremely apologetic when I tell her. “I know, I know, which is terrible because I’m from a small town in West Cork and I’m actually really nervous about it,” she says. “My dad’s read it and he never said ‘this is really worrying’ or anything like that but he would never censor me in that way anyway. I think that my hometown has been so incredibly supportive and encouraging and just couldn’t have been more delighted for me and Only Ever Yours and its success. The town in Asking for It isn’t based on my hometown and I would hope that if something like this happened that the people of the town that I live in wouldn’t react in the same way. I don’t think they would but you can’t tell.”

  She pauses for a second. “There was a case in Kerry about an hour away from where I live where a girl had been raped by a man and she brought him to court and afterwards the local priest and a group of local people all shook his hand as they were there to support him. She didn’t have anyone, she had like one family member and I think someone from the Rape Crisis Centre to support her, but everyone else just completely turned their backs on her.”

  Louise O'Neill: my journey to feminism
  Read more
  Feminism today means so much to so many people – myself wholeheartedly included – with celebrities like Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer banging the drum for it, and the promotion of feminism by both genders is encouraging discussions about the way society treats women. In 2015 feminism is, quite rightly, everywhere. So, I ask, why does Louise O’Neill think it’s taken so long for feminist YA fiction to emerge?

  “I remember when I was writing Only Ever Yours, I’d had the idea when I was living in New York in 2011 and I was a little bit worried when I came home because The Hunger Games had been so huge and the movie rights to Divergent had just been signed so I was like, ‘the dystopian market is really saturated, am I making a mistake because by the time I write this novel and get it published, will the market have collapsed?’ ”

  “But I felt that the feminist aspect was what most interested me,” she says. “I could feel that there was a lot of energy going up around that; the Vagenda had just started, the Everyday Sexism project had just started and there seemed to be more of a conversation about feminism. I think people were talking more about women’s rights and saying we’re not there yet, there’s still more that needs to be achieved. The late 90s and early 2000s were like a feminist wasteland where people were saying that we were living in a post-feminist era and we don’t need feminism anymore. I think that this sort of literature was being written because people are beginning to understand that there is a lot more work that needs to be done.”

  At Yalc, O’Neill met her fans who came to her signing in droves. As she wrote on her blog afterwards, “Some of them were men, many were women in their twenties and thirties, but most of the queue consisted of teenage girls. They gushed over the book, they asked for selfies, their hands shaking as they tried to take them, a few of them began to cry as they told me how important this book was to them.” How does she think Asking for It will be received by readers of both genders?

  “My father was actually the first person to read it – he was the first person to read Only Ever Yours as well – and his reaction was really interesting because he said that it really made him think and that it was a difficult book to read, it really brought up a lot of problems in our society, particularly how we view women, and he said it was a frightening look at rape culture and victim blaming.”

  She pauses to clarify the question. “How do I think it’s going to be received? I think what’s been really interesting to me is that I do think a lot of men tend to get quite defensive when you bring up rape issues and a lot of that is because we still have this image in our head that a rape is when you’re walking down the street and a stranger pulls you into an alleyway with a knife. So with date rape and stuff, I think a lot of guys – and a lot of women, too – will think, ‘God, I think that’s actually happened to me or I think I’ve done that’. That makes people incredibly uncomfortable so I think this book is probably going to infuriate a lot of people because it’s going to push those kind of buttons.

  Free read! Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill
  Read more
  “I really hope it does educate people about the issue of consent. I’m not blaming boys, it’s about education. Girls are constantly taught ‘don’t get raped’ but boys aren’t taught not to rape and I think the problem is that there’s such a pressure on boys to lose their virginity, to have sex, to have loads of sexual partners, that they sort of push things as hard and as fast as they can… it’s blurred lines. It gets difficult because they’re so desperate to have sex so that their friends don’t make fun of them that they’re pushing girls past the point of comfort, so I hope that when they read it’ll just make them think about those issues a little bit more.”

  After Asking for It, what’s next for O’Neill? “It’s funny because I just had a meeting with my editor and my agent yesterday to discuss going forward and I have a few ideas, but it’s been so hectic since Only Ever Yours came out – it just hasn’t lost momentum, it’s been growing and growing and growing,” she says, although she doesn’t sound tired at all. “I really want to take just a couple of weeks, rent a cottage in Connemara with no wi-fi, just me and my notebook, no laptop, and take a bit of time to flesh out these three ideas I’m really interested in. I want to see which one I’m going forward with next.” She takes a pause. “I really felt that this book took a lot out of me.”

  Louise O’Neill appeared at Book Trust’s Young Adult Literature Convention (Yalc) at London Film & Comic Con. Her second novel Asking for It is published on 3 September.

• Refinery 29 - http://www.refinery29.com/2016/03/107138/louise-o-neill-interview-asking-for-it

  QUOTED: "When I was writing, I wanted to challenge certain ideas that we have around rape and sexual violence. We have it in our heads that rape is a stranger in a dark alley — raping a white, middle-class virgin at knife point. Obviously, those kinds of violent attacks do happen. But it's much more common for the victim to know the perpetrator. It might happen at a party, there might be drinking. Gray rape, dubious consent, non-consensual sex: all of these are just really nice ways of saying rape."
  ". I wanted the reader to understand — to be complicit in the victim-blaming with Emma — so that we understand how deeply those attitudes are ingrained. People say to me: Emma's a bitch, or Emma's really unlikeable. Well, horrible people get raped every day. That doesn't mean that they're any less deserving of our sympathy or our support."

  Author Louise O'Neill Talks About Asking For It & Rape In The Age Of Social Media
  ELIZABETH KIEFER
  MARCH 31, 2016, 11:00 AM

  PHOTO: MIKI BARLOK.
  Louise O'Neill may still be relatively new to the scene, but the Irish author is already earning comparisons to feminist literary legends like Margaret Atwood, and being declared the best YA fiction writer working today.

  With two award-winning books under her belt, 31-year-old O'Neill has certainly earned her reputation. The first, Only Ever Yours, tells the story of two best friends living in a dystopian society where a woman's value hinges entirely on her skin-deep beauty: It's dark and frightening, not least because of how closely it mirrors our contemporary cultural values. But it's her second book, Asking for It, that will find its way deep under your skin and send a chill down your spine.

  Released in the U.K. last September and here on April 5, the novel — which has already taken home a host of awards — tells the story of Emma O'Donovan, an 18-year-old small-town beauty whose life unravels after she is raped, and photos of the assault circulate on social media. If that narrative sounds familiar, that's because it's sadly all too real: Asking for It formed in O'Neill's mind after she read about the high-profile sex crime cases in Steubenville, OH and Maryville, MO.

  After images of her attack go viral, Emma becomes a pariah in her community. Her friends, schoolmates, teachers, and even her parents shun her, questioning her story and suggesting, as the title goes, that she was somehow to blame for her own rape.

  O'Neill took a break from her writing desk, where she's hard at work on her third book, to talk all things Asking for It — including why it's a phrase that needs to be taken out of circulation when it comes to survivors of sexual assault.

  Asking for It is an incredibly tough read because of the subject matter. What do you hope people get out of it?
  "When I was writing, I wanted to challenge certain ideas that we have around rape and sexual violence. We have it in our heads that rape is a stranger in a dark alley — raping a white, middle-class virgin at knife point. Obviously, those kinds of violent attacks do happen. But it's much more common for the victim to know the perpetrator. It might happen at a party, there might be drinking. Gray rape, dubious consent, non-consensual sex: all of these are just really nice ways of saying rape.

  "We also have this idea of what a perfect victim will look like. Most women won't fall into that category. Then they'll have this feeling of, I was drunk, wearing a short skirt, taking drugs. That creates this culture where it's so much easier to blame women, and that's the problem — that is rape culture. When women are violated in one of the most horrific ways possible, their first reaction is to blame themselves, to wonder what they did wrong, to wonder what they could have done differently. I wanted the reader to understand — to be complicit in the victim-blaming with Emma — so that we understand how deeply those attitudes are ingrained. People say to me: Emma's a bitch, or Emma's really unlikeable. Well, horrible people get raped every day. That doesn't mean that they're any less deserving of our sympathy or our support."

  Emma, of course, doesn't fit the profile of "perfect victim." She's flawed in the way that most women — most people — are. What is that meant to convey to the reader?
  "With my first book, I was dealing much more with the pressure on women to conform to an often unattainable ideal of beauty. In this book, I was also trying to look at not just physical-attractiveness standards — we're also expected to uphold much higher moral standards. We're supposed to be well-behaved and nice and good girls.

  "It's a double standard that still really exists; like girls who carry condoms, there's almost a shame in that. I think with this book, which has had a very strong impact, particularly in Ireland, it just came at the exact right time and kickstarted a national conversation about sexual consent and what that means."
  “
  GRAY RAPE, DUBIOUS CONSENT, NON-CONSENSUAL SEX: ALL OF THESE ARE JUST REALLY NICE WAYS OF SAYING RAPE.
  LOUISE O'NEILL
  ”
  How did you settle on the title?
  "It's perfect because it encapsulates rape culture, because there is this real premise that a woman who gets raped must have been asking for it — that she must have gone out of her way to be looking for it. I think both men and women are guilty of this line of thinking. With women, it's not necessarily that we want to blame other women; it's a way of protecting ourselves emotionally. We think: If I take all these precautions, if I mind my drink, if I always get a taxi home, if I don't walk late at night, if I do all of the things, then I can prevent myself from being raped. So then when we hear about someone who has been raped, there's this sort of automatic scramble to try and find a reason why that person was raped and why I won't be raped. So it's like, Well, she went back to his house, or She was really drunk. It feeds into this culture that blames women, with a two-pronged effect: We don't believe women and we blame them simultaneously."

  In the book, Emma's friends pull back after her assault, even suggesting that maybe she invited her attack, or she's not being truthful about what happened. On top of victim-blaming, there's a lot of evidence of toxic girl culture in the novel. Could you talk about that?
  "I went to an all-girl school from the age of 4 to 18. I'm very familiar with that sort of toxic environment. As an adult, my female friendships have become the most important aspects of my life. As you get older, you begin to recognize more of the effects of the patriarchy and you begin to understand how that works. It actually makes you reject a lot of those tenets that made friendships so difficult as a teenager.

  "I think women are encouraged to compete with each other in a way that men aren't. I remember that from school. It wasn't about who is the most intelligent, who is the best at sports, who is the most ambitious — those were not the ways in which we were encouraged to compete. It was who's the skinniest, who's the prettiest, who gets the most male attention. It's impossible, actually, to be truly friends with someone when you're watching all the time, comparing yourself with them. Girls are encouraged to value their appearance and in a way that men aren't. It's a burden.

  "When I was writing my first book, I barely washed my hair, I didn't wear any makeup for six months, I wore, like, my tracksuit pants every day. But it's amazing when I'm not thinking about how much I weigh, or worrying about what I look like, but actually how much I can achieve. And then I think, like, Wow, this is what it must be like to be a man. Just wash and go. This is why they're ruling the world."
  “
  I WANT THE READER TO FINISH THE BOOK AND FEEL FURIOUS...BECAUSE THAT FURY IS THE ONLY WAY THAT WE'RE GOING TO ENACT ANY SORT OF REAL CHANGE.
  LOUISE O'NEILL
  ”
  You've referenced some of your own experiences that have been baked into the book. But Asking for It is not autobiographical, right?
  "Obviously, Asking for It is set in a small town in West Cork, [Ireland], and I'm from a small town in West Cork. I'm very familiar with that world and the culture. But Emma is not based on me. I have had my own experiences — to be honest, I know very few women my own age that don't have a story. When I was 18, I was sexually assaulted. I couldn't quite piece together what had happened, so I just put it in the back of my mind. When I got older, I was telling my therapist the story, and she said, 'You know, you didn't give consent in that situation.' I was like, 'I don't really understand what you're saying.' It just wasn't even a conversation I was used to having.

  "What I found funny was the amount of friends who contacted me once they read the book to tell me about something that has happened to them. I wondered, Why have we never talked about this before? I'm that person that people tell stuff to. So why haven't we talked about this? Everyone said, 'I just wanted to forget about it.'"

  One of the hardest parts of this book is that it reveals, in a culture that's hostile to survivors, that it actually is easier to stay quiet, however damaging. You leave Asking for It open-ended in that way. Emma doesn't get a triumphant moment. Why did you decide to take it in that direction?
  "The first part of your question I wanted to address is that it's easier to be quiet, because I think there's a real truth in that. A lot of people actually said to me, 'I don't understand why she wants to pretend at the start that she had consented.' I was like, 'You obviously didn't grow up in a small town.' People just look at you in a completely different way. Emma is concerned with how people perceive her and manipulating her image — of not being able to control that, and being seen as a victim.

  "As for the ending, I think a lot of people are very frustrated with me. Even my editor asked, 'Why did you end it this way? It's really dissatisfying.' And I said, well, I want it to be dissatisfying. I want the reader to finish the book and feel so furious about what happened to Emma — so furious at the fact that those boys will get off and won't see any jail time — because I really feel like that fury is the only way that we're going to enact any sort of real change."

  How does social media compound the trauma of Emma's rape?
  "There are two elements to that. First, there's something so horrifying about an unconscious girl being violated, and that people's first reaction isn't to stop to help her, but to take a photo. It reflects our need to record every part of our lives. It's just such a lack of empathy. I think it also highlighted the entitlement that these men had, to use her body in whatever way that they wanted, and this real presumption that they couldn't be touched, that they were invincible, that if they put the photos on social media, they wouldn't see any sort of repercussion, legal or moral.

  "Beyond that, what I was interested in with Emma is that I actually don't think it's necessarily the rape [that is the most traumatic]. I'm not saying this is the case for all survivors. I mean it is individual to Emma: It's the humiliation. It's the reaction afterward — the way her family failed her; the way her friends turned their backs; the way that her entire community and people that she's known since she was a child and that she loves have all banded together to protect the perpetrators and to isolate her. I think that is what is so crushing for her.

  "Twenty years ago, Emma could have moved to Dublin. She could have gone to New York. She could have moved to London. She could have started an entirely new life for herself. But once something is on the Internet it lives forever. She can't escape this now."

  You've tackled some major social issues with your first two books. What's next?
  "I'm in the middle of writing my third book, but there's pressure; Asking for It really seems to have hit a nerve. Since it's been published, there's hardly been a day that I don't receive email from a woman, and a few men, who want to share their stories of being raped. I gave a talk at a sexual violence center for survivors. One person I spoke to afterward sticks with me. 'I was raped five years ago and I've been in counseling ever since. Everyone keeps telling me that it's not my fault. When I finished your book, it was the first time in five years that I thought maybe it hadn't been,' she said. And I honestly was so overwhelmed. I felt like such a fraud, to be honest. I'm just a writer. I'm not a therapist. I'm not saving lives.

  "That creates a little more pressure because maybe the next book — now I need to tackle some new social issue. But as a writer, as a creative person, I don't know. The story comes, and you tell it the best way you can. It just so happened that the first two stories that came to me dealt very strongly with important social issues. I don't necessarily think that the third one is going to. But I'm just at the very beginning."

  Asking for It goes on sale in the U.S. April 5, 2016.

• Journal - http://www.thejournal.ie/louise-oneill-asking-for-it-interview-2311451-Sep2015/

  QUOTED: "I wanted to reader to finish this book and be absolutely furious. Furious about what happened to Emma, furious about our low rate of [rape] conviction, furious at the fact the victim is blamed. That rage is the only way change is going to be enacted."

  Louise O'Neill: "I wanted the reader to finish this book and be absolutely furious"

  The Cork author’s book is one of the most talked-about novels of the year.

  Sep 5th 2015, 11:45 AM 32,384 Views 30 Comments Share131 Tweet80 Email18

  Image: Anna Groniecka
  ‘I wanted to reader to finish this book and be absolutely furious. Furious about what happened to Emma, furious about our low rate of [rape] conviction, furious at the fact the victim is blamed. That rage is the only way change is going to be enacted.’ – Louise O’Neill
  LOUISE O’NEILL IS having a moment. Or maybe Ireland – and beyond, as news of the young west Cork author’s powerful work spreads – is having a Louise O’Neill moment.
  The 30-year-old’s name has been on everyone in the Irish publishing world’s lips since last year, when her debut novel Only Ever Yours (dystopian fiction which you can read more about here) was published.
  The buzz grew and grew as word spread that the follow-up, Asking For It, was going to be about a rape case in a rural village; and the noise has continued to grow in the past few weeks as word spreads – mainly through Twitter and blogs, two major online arbiters of what deserves attention – of just how great (and disturbing) the book is.
  Follow
  Gemma Varnom @gemmavarnom
  Is this the most important book of 2015? @thefworduk reviews @oneilllo's ASKING FOR IT: http://www.thefword.org.uk/2015/09/asking-for-it-louise-oneill-book-review/ … #NotAskingForIt
  4:02 AM - 3 Sep 2015
  5 5 Retweets 9 9 likes
  Source: Gemma Fraser/Twitter
  Was she asking for it?

  Centred on the story of a Leaving Cert student, Emma (18), who lives in a rural town in the south of Ireland, Asking For It is about what happens to her one night at a party, an incident that changes the course of her life.
  It’s not an easy read, not least because of what happens to Emma, but also because the book has a wider focus too, tackling rape culture and what rape survivors can experience here, both socially and legally.
  At last count, Ireland had the lowest conviction rate for rape cases (following allegation) in Europe, standing at 1 – 2%. The EU average is 8 – 10%.
  In its most recent report (from 2013), the Rape Crisis Network said that of the people who contacted it about a rape allegation, 91% knew the perpetrator. 48% of survivors of adult sexual violence reported it to a formal authority.
  It’s likely readers will see themselves in one of O’Neill’s characters – maybe Emma, or one of her friends, her mother, her dad.
  The reader might struggle with empathy for Emma; they might judge her and her actions. They might have been through something similar. They might have to confront their own thoughts and judgement on an issue that appears more grey than black-and-white.
  Asking For It is an uncomfortable read, and O’Neill wants it to be that way.
  Asking for It by Louise O'Neill
  The book, said O’Neill, was inspired in part by a few incidents: Todd Akin’s comments about ‘legitimate rape’; Whoopi Goldberg‘s ‘rape rape’ comments about Roman Polanski; the Steubenville case in the US – and the treatment of the so-called ‘Slane Girl’ in Ireland, who was pictured in a sexual situation at Slane with two men.
  “It wasn’t just the fact that these men had violated this girl in the most reprehensible manner,” said O’Neill of Steubenville. “It was their sense of entitlement which I thought was incredible. They thought they were infallible.”
  “Male attitudes and attitudes in general towards women are something I am very interested in and very passionate about,” she explained. These attitudes, and the culture that helps create and foster them, are part of what she grabs and tackles in Asking For It.
  Was she asking nice?

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  Lisa Carey @msleedy
  Stayed up til stupid o'clock last night reading @oneilllo's Asking For It, it's BRILLIANT. Gripping, thoughtful, angry, real.
  7:49 AM - 4 Sep 2015
  Retweets 2 2 likes
  Source: Lisa Carey/Twitter
  From the early stages, O’Neill was intent on having protagonist Emma as the ‘mean girl’. “I wanted to invert that trope of the idea of the victim being this sweet innocent girl,” she explained. “Again, that does happen, but I feel I’ve seen that [explored] so many times.”
  She wanted “to make the reader almost complicit because of the fact Emma is unlikeable”. The reader isn’t always going to understand or condone Emma’s actions, forcing them to think deeply about what occurs in the book.
  Because she behaves in ways before and after the rape that don’t conform to our ideas of how a victim behaves like before, and reacts afterwards. That is really important – we need to understand there is no such thing as a perfect victim.
  Rape can happen to people of all ages, backgrounds, appearances – “there is no standard ‘this is what a rape victim looks like’”.
  She wanted the reader “to almost get to a point where they are saying she nearly was asking for it, she nearly was asking for that to happen to her”.
  To have that frightening moment of realising you are blaming her as well.
  @oneilllo Tweet by @gmpolice: Drinking is not a crime. Rape is. #NoConsentNoSex pic.twitter.com/eScV3SmaKW Heartening message re #notaskingforit
  — Neena Shukla (@NeenaLibrarian) September 4, 2015
  Source: Neena Shukla/Twitter
  O’Neill wanted to encourage people to question their own subconscious beliefs or notions around rape. “You might not agree with everything I’ve done,” she acknowledged. We are all flawed in our own ways, and Emma is “a mass of contradictions”.
  In addition, she wanted the experience “to be as authentic to real life as possible”, which meant there was no fairytale ending planned. O’Neill visited the Cork Rape Crisis centre and spoke to rape survivors for the book, having thrown herself into an intense six-month writing process.
  The research was so intense that O’Neill had nightmares about being raped. By the time she was finished, she “felt very defeated, very burnt out and exhausted”.
  If she was asking for it…

  untitled-94-310x415
  She describes her first draft approach as “very obsessive” – she locks herself away at home in West Cork, not going out, not seeing people, just her and her writing wedded together for half a year.
  “I was really taking on Emma’s personality nearly, and really trying to get into it. It was draining and I don’t think I was very pleasant to be around for those six months.” Though a third book is most definitely on the agenda, the experience left her depleted:
  When I finished, I thought: ‘I don’t know if I can ever write a book again’.
  Usually she’s able to remain relatively unattached from her fictional characters, but Emma stayed with her, even today.
  That’s because “there are millions of Emmas” in the world, pointed out O’Neill: “Every two seconds in the US, there is a sexual assault. This isn’t a dystopian novel, this is real life.”
  There needs to be a “huge cultural shift in how we see rape”, said O’Neill.
  “The only way that will happen is with parents discussing the issue of consent with children [she emphasises that this means boys as well as girls]; with better sex education in school, not just focusing on reproduction but on consent”.
  She said that it’s up to people to stand up to misogyny, “not saying it’s ‘not worth the hassle’ having this argument”.
  It’s going to take sustained ‘being very annoying’ for 10 years and maybe it will change.
  Did she ask you twice?

  Louise O'Neill, Novelist Picture: Miki Barlok
  Source: Photographer: Miki Barlokwww.ba
  While Only Ever Yours was aimed at young women (both of her books are in the ‘young adult’, or YA category, which has exploded in the past few years thanks to the success of authors like John Green), O’Neill wants this book to be read by all genders.
  “It’s really important that they read this,” she said, pausing to note that this isn’t meant to sound pretentious, before expanding:
  Not because I am the best writer or because my book is so much better than any book. This kind of book and this kind of literature needs to be read so that they can begin to understand the messages both myself and other writers are trying to convey – and [that] we are trying to dismantle rape culture.
  A prolific tweeter, O’Neill is never shy to share her thoughts on current feminist issues. But does it sometimes get dispiriting to realise you’re coming across the same issues over and over and over again?
  Follow
  Louise O' Neill ✔ @oneilllo
  Headline on gossip mag "Real bodies exposed!"
  Thank Christ, I've been so tired of all those fake bodies.
  12:46 PM - 3 Sep 2015
  1 1 Retweet 14 14 likes
  Source: Louise O' Neill/Twitter
  Follow
  Louise O' Neill ✔ @oneilllo
  As a feminist, you don't have to like every other woman you meet but as a decent human being you should be civil anyway.
  8:55 AM - 1 Sep 2015
  4 4 Retweets 21 21 likes
  Source: Louise O' Neill/Twitter
  “I remember reading the Handmaid’s Tale when I was 15,” she recalled, “and going ‘my God, I can’t believe how relevant it feels and it’s 15 years old. And [now] I can’t believe it’s 30 years old and it’s just as relevant.”
  But she does believe progress is being made, pointing to the swell of voices talking about the Bill Cosby sexual assault allegations.
  O’Neill is one of this generation’s feminists who isn’t afraid to speak out about misogyny, sexism, or issues she feels need to be discussed. Her books are a way of furthering that discussion – but she believes the issues raised in Asking For It are not all about her.
  I kind of feel like this is bigger than me, and I am just the messenger and putting it out there. It’s much more important than me.
  Her aim? To get people talking. To get people angry. To make people furious. That rage, that discussion – that’s how, she said, people can bring about change.
  Asking For It is published by Quercus and available now.

Louise O'Neill
Born: 1985 in Clonakilty, Ireland
Other Names : O'Neill, Louise Anne May
Nationality: Irish
Occupation: Novelist
Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2016. From Literature Resource Center.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2016 Gale, Cengage Learning
Updated:Aug. 19, 2016

Table of Contents

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PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Born 1985. Education: Trinity College Dublin; postgraduate study at the Dublin Institute of Technology. E-mail: louise@louiseoneillauthor.com.

CAREER:
Writer. Former intern, Elle magazine.

AWARDS:
Newcomer of the Year, Irish Book Awards, 2014; YA Book Prize, 2015, for Only Ever Yours; Eilis Dillon Award, CBI (Children's Books Ireland) Awards, 2015.

WORKS:

WRITINGS:

Only Ever Yours (young adult novel), Quercus (New York NY), 2015.
Asking for It (young adult novel), Quercus (New York NY), 2016.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS:
Only Ever Yours has been optioned for film and television.

Sidelights

In her debut young adult novel Only Ever Yours, Louise O'Neill presents a dystopian tale of extreme misogyny. Girls are raised and educated at The School, where they are taught to be the perfect wives. They are taught that the most important thing in life is to be pretty and subservient. The girls, called "eves," are medicated on SleepSound, their weight is controlled by kcal blockers, and their behavior is monitored by their teachers, known as "the chastities." When the girls are sixteen, they will be chosen as wives by the powerful and the elite. Those who are not chosen will become mere concubines. As frieda and isabel (their names are lowercased throughout the book) prepare for their final year of schooling, isabel (one of the prettiest and nicest girls in school) begins to lose focus. Her best friend, frieda, tries to figure out how to convince isabel to regain her focus for their upcoming "graduation."

Discussing the book in a Looking Glass Magazine Web site interview with Elena Browne, O'Neill remarked: "While I feel eating disorders are normalised in the world of the story, I would hope that the reader realizes that my intention was to highlight how seductive dieting can be, and how dangerous it can be to be seduced by that. The School uses weight as another tool with which to control the girls, the same way that the 'Beauty Myth' is used in a patriarchal society to manipulate and oppress women." She added: "It's a difficult subject. I want to deal with the mindset of someone who is obsessed with their weight and physical subject as honestly as I can, but the fear is that it will then be triggering for a reader suffering from some of the same issues. I hope that I dealt with it in a responsible manner. As someone who has battled eating disorders for most of her adult life, it is important to me that I did so." O'Neill also explained to Browne: "I am very interested in the idea of beauty, the importance we place on beauty as a society, and this idea that beauty is something that will automatically confer happiness upon us. It's something I'm exploring in my second novel as well."

Praising the author's efforts in the Telegraph Online, a reviewer advised that "The Stepford Wives, written by a man as it happens, is more than four decades old but if Louise O'Neill's YA novel Only Ever Yours is anything to go by, then the future will be full of submissive and docile wives. ... It is a witty and unsettling story. ... Hopefully Only Ever Yours will be read widely." Patrick Sproull, writing in the Guardian, was also impressed, asserting: "O'Neill is different because she is refreshingly honest in her writing, skewering modern concepts of beauty, objectification and patriarchy. Her books are also pleasingly adult (so much so that her first book was recently re-released as an adult novel) and it's heartening to see a YA writer who treats their readers so maturely." Although School Library Journal correspondent Angie Manfredi announced that the novel is not without flaws, she also announced that "this book is dark and unrelenting; there are no revolutions or happy endings to be had here."

In the words of online Den of Geek contributor Louisa Mellor, "If you've ever suspected that celebrity fashion magazines should come with cigarette packet-style health warnings (Self-objectification is highly addictive: don't start / Can cause a slow and painful erosion of self-esteem / Protect children: don't make them breathe your unending consumer-driven quest for physical improvement) then Only Ever Yours' brutal skewering of the beauty myth will likely speak to you." Indeed, a Book Smugglers Web site reviewer stated: "You open Only Ever Yours and you are plunged into a story whose foundations are built on misogyny, where misogyny covers the walls, where there is nothing but misogyny: it's the status quo where the bones of this futuristic society are built over the lives of repressed, oppressed, despised girls." The reviewer also noted: "Ultimately, Only Ever Yours is 1984, Mean Girls and Handmaid's Tale rolled into one, featuring a brave if completely pessimistic magnifying glass to how we treat women right here, right now. It takes everything that is misogynistic about our world and boils it down to an undiluted, concentrated dose of bleak despair. I am pretty sure I loved it." Offering further applause in Publishers Weekly, a critic pointed out that the "terrifying and heartbreaking" novel is "an heir to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale ... [and is] sure to be discussed for years to come."

Indeed, the book's homage to Atwood is no accident, as online Dazed Digital columnist Sarah Waldron reported: "It was Margaret Atwood's seminal dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, that would provide the preliminary framework for O'Neill's feminist education and also for her first novel, which is set in a similarly terrifying-yet-plausible misogynist world in which women are bred either to be subservient wives or sexual objects." Waldron further commented: "It just blew me away. I really felt afterwards that the way in which I viewed the world (had changed). It gave me a vocabulary with which to articulate myself."

FURTHER READINGS:

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

PERIODICALS

Bookseller, May 23, 2014, Charlotte Eyre, "Teen Authors' Dystopian Approach to Feminism," p. 12; March 20, 2015, Charlotte Eyre, "O'Neill Wins Inaugural YA Book Prize with Feminist Dystopia," p. 12; May 22, 2015, Charlotte Eyre, "Quercus Backs O'Neill after YA Book Prize Win," p. 14.
Guardian (London, England), September 3, 2015, Patrick Sproull, review of Only Ever Yours.
Publishers Weekly, April 6, 2015, review of Only Ever Yours, p. 62; December 2, 2015, review of Only Ever Yours, p. 110.
School Library Journal, June, 2015, Angie Manfredi, review of Only Ever Yours, p. 126.
ONLINE

Book Smugglers, http://thebooksmugglers.com/ (March 16, 2016), review of Only Ever Yours.
Broadly, http://broadly.vice.com/ (September 8, 2015), Amanda Kavanagh, author interview and review of Asking for It.
Bustle, http://www.bustle.com/ (September 18, 2015), Emma Oulton, "Who Is Louise O'Neill?"
Dazed Digital, http://www.dazeddigital.com/ (March 16, 2016), Sarah Waldron, author profile and interview.
Den of Geek, http://www.denofgeek.us/ (May 12, 2015), Louisa Mellor, author interview and review of Only Ever Yours.
Independent Online, http://www.independent.ie/ (September 9, 2015), Joanna Kiernan, author interview.
Irish Examiner Online, http://www.irishexaminer.com/ (September 9, 2015), Denise O'Donoghue, "Irish Author Louise O'Neill's Novel to Be Adapted for Film and TV."
Irish Post, http://irishpost.co.uk/ (August 11, 2014), Enda Brady, "Louise O'Neill on the 'Therapeutic Process' of Writing Her Debut Novel."
Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/ (September 5, 2015), review of Asking for It.
Journal, http://www.the journal.ie/ (September 5, 2015), review of Asking for It.
Looking Glass Magazine, http://www.tlgmagazine.org/ (March 16, 2016), Elena Browne, author interview.
Louise O'Neill Home Page, http://www.louiseoneillauthor.com (March 16, 2016).
New Statesman Online, http://www.newstatesman.com/ (October 11, 2015), June Eric-Udorie, author interview.
Stuff, http://www.stuff.co.nz/ (October 26, 2015), Kim Knight, author interview and review of Asking for It.
Telegraph Online, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (March 20, 2015), Martin Chilton, review of Only Ever Yours.*

QUOTED: "It is a powerful cautionary tale that will appeal to older teens as well as to adult readers."

Asking for It
Michael Cart
Booklist. 112.14 (Mar. 15, 2016): p20.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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Full Text:
Asking for It. By Louise O'Neill. Apr. 2016.304p. Quercus, $16.99 (9781681445373).

Thanks to a surfeit of alcohol and drugs, gorgeous, 18-year-old Emma can't remember what happened that Saturday night, but everyone else knows when photographs start appearing on the Internet showing her being sexually abused and humiliated by a group of her male friends. Yet try though she might, Emma still can't remember that evening. Nevertheless, the boys are charged with rape, and, as a result, Emma becomes a pariah in her small Irish hometown, her Facebook page filled with hate messages calling her slut, bitch, whore, and worse. Meanwhile, her case has become an international cause celebre when it is made the subject of a popular radio program. As her family begins to break apart, Emma becomes ever more self-hating and self-blaming. The words "my fault" become a mantra for her. But is it her fault? Emma seems never to consider that question, insisting to herself, instead, that she has ruined the boys' lives. As her own life becomes increasingly bleak, the novel veers dangerously close to melodrama. Nevertheless, it is a powerful cautionary tale that will appeal to older teens as well as to adult readers.--Michael Cart

YA: A natural fit for older teen readers, this crossover novel could have just as easily been published as YA. MC.

Cart, Michael

QUOTED: "It's a brutal, hard-to-forget portrait of human cruelty."

Asking for It
Publishers Weekly. 263.5 (Feb. 1, 2016): p68.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Full Text:
Asking for It

Louise O'Neill. Quercus (Hachette, dist.), $16.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-68144-537-3

O'Neill (Only Ever Yours) again examines the ways in which society devalues the bodies and lives of girls, this time taking on the subject of sexual assault. Emma O'Donovan, 18, has always been praised for her beauty, and she walks a line between cruelty and kindness to bend everyone to her whims. One night Emma parties too hard, drinking and taking drugs until she passes out. The next day she learns that she was the victim of a Steubenville-like gang rape, and the boys involved have plastered horrific and explicit photos of the assault online. Soon everyone in Emma's tight-knit Irish community has taken sides--mostly against her--and as a trial nears and the world watches, even Emma's family abandons her. O'Neill's treatment of how communities mishandle sexual assault and victimize its victims is unforgiving, and readers will despair to see Emma helpless in the face of injustice. It's a brutal, hard-to-forget portrait of human cruelty that makes disturbingly clear the way women and girls internalize sexist societal attitudes and unwarranted guilt. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

QUOTED: "a must-read that demands discussion and change."

O'Neill, Louise: Asking For It
Amy McKay
School Librarian. 64.2 (Summer 2016): p126.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The School Library Association
http://www.sla.org.uk/school-librarian.php
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Full Text:
O'Neill, Louise

Asking For It

Quercus, 2015, pp352, 12.99[pounds sterling]

978 1 78429 586 8

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Emma is a beautiful college student, well aware of her sexual charms and determined to maintain her status as Queen Bee. She bases her own self-worth on how others view her, is cruel, bitchy and a very difficult character to warm to. At a party Emma is gang-raped by a group of the town's football heroes and finds her life irrevocably changed. Unaware at first what has happened, she finds herself a social pariah and it is only as graphic photos circulate on social media that she discovers what has happened. Ostracised and condemned by all as the girl who was 'asking for it', life as she has known it gradually unravels.

Asking For It provides a brutal, shocking look at rape culture and current attitudes to women and consent. It is unflinchingly honest in its examination of slut-shaming, victim-blaming and the dangers of social media--issues that young people are confronted with daily. It is not an easy book to read, there are scenes of graphic sexual violence and it will undoubtedly evoke anger in the reader. For exactly these reasons it should be compulsory reading for all older teens, male and female. A must-read that demands discussion and change.

McKay, Amy

"Louise O'Neill." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2016. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1000319275&it=r&asid=963dbc40670030cb983968815b2f19b9. Accessed 12 Feb. 2017. Cart, Michael. "Asking for It." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2016, p. 20. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449416938&it=r&asid=04a5be9b4d1bacf04b726212dcb1aef4. Accessed 12 Feb. 2017. "Asking for It." Publishers Weekly, 1 Feb. 2016, p. 68. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA442780376&it=r&asid=b90415b5914ed46ee7d5dafd41b82623. Accessed 12 Feb. 2017. McKay, Amy. "O'Neill, Louise: Asking For It." School Librarian, Summer 2016, p. 126. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA457107206&it=r&asid=3805d8865679101f2cd6d6fdb034a70e. Accessed 12 Feb. 2017.

• Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/apr/10/asking-for-it-louise-oneill-review
  Word count: 759

  QUOTED: "It’s not the kind of ... book you enjoy, it is a book you endure. Not due to the writing – it’s beautifully written – but due to the plot and circumstances. It’s horrific but so incredibly important to read."

  Asking For It by Louise O'Neill- review
  ‘horrific but so incredibly important to read’

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  Sunday 10 April 2016 04.00 EDT Last modified on Monday 6 February 2017 09.26 EST

  Asking For It is one of the most shocking yet completely believable books I’ve probably ever read. I didn’t enjoy it, it’s not the kind of the book you enjoy, it is a book you endure. Not due to the writing – it’s beautifully written – but due to the plot and circumstances. It’s horrific but so incredibly important to read.

  Emma is just eighteen, beautiful and she knows it. In her small home town in Ireland, Emma is raped by several local boys and suddenly, unjustly the ‘good girl’ reputation she worked so fiercely for is tarnished. This book exposes the terrible way rape victims are treated in our society and thrusts the rape culture we are all immersed in right under your nose so you can’t ignore it anymore. This book is set in Ireland but what happens to Emma is too common in many other places, it could easily have been set in the UK, US and so many other countries. Rape culture is real and it’s everywhere.

  Emma is not only not believed but she’s blamed, tormented and even her family don’t support her. One of the things I actually really appreciated in the book was that Emma wasn’t actually a likeable character. Before she is raped she’s the school mean girl, a queen bee, the kind of girl who lives for her reputation. She’s extremely jealous, mean to her friends and seems to lie to everyone. Emma flirts with boys, wears low cut tops and even takes drugs on the night it happened, but in no way deserved what happened to her any more than if she had a different character or wore different clothes. Even after it happens she is in no way the ‘perfect’ victim. She didn’t want to report it, and seemed to blame herself for what happened as much as the others did. In fact, no characters in Asking For It were perfect or particularly nice, which if anything added to the intensity and horror of the situation. This is a reflection of reality. People react this way, people act this way, people are this way and it needs to stop.

  Asking For It cover
  The boys and rapists in this book are described as ‘good boys’ as though they, who had committed this life-ruining crime, had someone just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Emma, on the other hand, is rejected by her town and isolated by the community. The quotation I really like from the book is “they are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I was a liar until proven honest”. This is the story of Emma’s demise and it is heart-breaking to read.

  I read this book in one sitting, staying up until the early hours of the morning. I didn’t want to sleep until I had finished it, until I knew what I had been expecting the whole time. Our society has too many taboo subjects. Things like rape and sexual assault and slut shaming should, and need, to be spoken about. It needs to start with proper sex education in schools, so people become aware of what can happen. Boys need to be taught that they are not entitled to girls’ bodies. Girls need to be told that they have a choice. People need to be taught about sexual consent. Teenagers already know that it happens but they don’t know what it really is, and they need to. I hear countless rape jokes at school, and if people are old to enough to joke about something this terrible, then they are definitely old enough to learn about rape and consent.

  How do I get involved in the Guardian children's books site?
  Read more
  So thank you Louise O’Neill for writing this book and starting this conversation. Asking For It is so important, and everyone should read it.

• Irish Times
  http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/asking-for-it-by-louise-o-neill-brave-clever-provocative-but-relentless-1.2340446
  Word count: 961

  QUOTED: "Filled with ambiguities and perspectives, this is brave and clever writing from a relatively new voice in Irish fiction. Although the issue of consent is at the novel’s core, O’Neill resists passing judgment. Instead she forces the reader to consider the morality."

  Asking for It, by Louise O’Neill: brave, clever, provocative but relentless
  Review: A harrowing novel on the issue of sexual consent asks important questions of the reader, writes Sarah Gilmartin

  Louise O’Neill. Photograph: Anna Groniecka
  Louise O’Neill. Photograph: Anna Groniecka
  Previous ImageNext ImageSarah Gilmartin
  Sat, Sep 5, 2015, 01:00
  First published:
  Sat, Sep 5, 2015, 01:00

  Everything about Louise O’Neill’s second novel, Asking for It, is provocative. The title, the unlikable heroine, her unlikable friends, the goldfish social-media world in which they live, the horrific assault at the story’s centre, and, particularly, the treatment of the victim by her community in the aftermath.
  Provocation is at once a central theme and a governing force behind the book. This is an important novel that tackles the complex topic of sexual consent fearlessly, at times relentlessly. Published under Quercus’s children’s literature imprint, its crossover potential falls firmly at the older end of young adult fiction.
  O’Neill presents a dark world where traditional Irish values clash with modern morals and media. The result is a murky reality where individual rights get trampled by the mob.
  Split into two parts – before and after the assault – the novel focuses on the misfortunes of a fifth-year student, 18-year-old Emma O’Donovan, from the fictional Cork town of Ballinatoom. Beautiful Emma is a superficial and sharp-tongued teenager, whose core group of friends seem to either tolerate or dislike her. Best friend Maggie is growing weary of Emma’s attention-seeking ways. No man, not even Maggie’s boyfriend, is off-limits to Emma’s flirting, borne of low self-esteem and a desperate need to be admired.
  O’Neill doesn’t flinch from the negative aspects of her heroine’s personality. There’s no kind-heart-beneath-it-all capitulation. Emma steals from her friends, is jealous of their attributes, bullies the weaker ones with snide remarks and, shockingly, advises her friend Jamie to keep her mouth shut after she is raped: “‘Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen,’ I told her. ‘It’s easier that way. Easier for you.’”
  Callous, anti-feminist stance
  It is a callous, anti-feminist stance and, in O’Neill’s perverse world, also prophetic. Hours after she recounts this conversation, Emma herself becomes the victim of a gang rape at a house party where she has drunk and drugged herself unconscious.
  Her parents find her dumped like a sack of rubbish on their doorstep the next day. O’Neill paints a graphic and harrowing picture of the ferociously sunburnt, half-clothed young woman, covered in bruises and vomit, who has been abused on multiple fronts.
  Even though Emma’s memory of the evening has been eviscerated, forgetting is not an option in the modern age. Reams of photos are posted online: Emma is comatose, naked, and splayed in various sexual positions, surrounded by a group of young men who then claim to be innocent. Further muddying the waters is the fact that Emma had consensual sex with one of her rapists earlier that night.
  The themes of O’Neill’s acclaimed debut, Only Ever Yours, which won the Cork author the best-newcomer prize at the Irish Book Awards last year, are revisited in Asking For It. Issues of appearance and self-esteem drive both narratives. Women are viewed as playthings for men, with personalities and bodies made to measure: “My body is not my own any more. They have stamped their name all over it.”
  The girls in Ballinatoom are rivals instead of friends, even the mother characters whose one-upmanship is cleverly incorporated. Men make choices and women shoulder blame, responsibility being at all times a female concern. Asking for It is arguably more chilling than the dystopian debut, as this is real Ireland, presented in painstaking detail.
  Less than idyllic
  The idyllic town of Ballinatoom has “houses curving around the bay like a wishbone, all painted in the same canary yellow”. Less idyllic is the partisanship of the townspeople after the attack. The church, gardaí, even the local taxi driver turn on Emma and support her GAA-playing attackers, making it virtually impossible for the family to exist in the community.
  This results in a slower second half, with Emma’s interior struggles taking centre stage. The narrative she tells herself is repetitive and can feel relentless, which is no doubt deliberate as O’Neill seeks to draw us into the character’s shame. The repeated use of brackets to show the difference between public and private thoughts can grate, however, as does Emma’s obsession with how she is perceived.
  More interaction with her friends in the aftermath, or with her resentful mother who would love “the luxury of a nervous breakdown”, or, particularly, with her traumatised, taciturn father, would bring light and shade to this part of the book, but perhaps the point is to show only the darkness.
  Filled with ambiguities and perspectives, this is brave and clever writing from a relatively new voice in Irish fiction. Although the issue of consent is at the novel’s core, O’Neill resists passing judgment. Instead she forces the reader to consider the morality. Was she “asking for it”? That’s what everyone wants to know about the attack on Emma. But the real point is: why do we live in a society where such a question is permitted at all?
  Sat, Sep 5, 2015, 01:00

• Telegraph
  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/young-adult-books/Louise-oneill-asking-for-it-book-review/
  Word count: 484

  QUOTED: "Asking for It is a brave and important book about rape culture, sexism and victim-blaming in modern society. ... People should read Asking for It but be prepared for an ending that is as pitiful as it is honest."

  Asking For It, by Louise O'Neill, review

  Louise O'Neill
  Martin Chilton, culture editor
  16 SEPTEMBER 2015 • 9:26AM
  "I am being ripped apart at the seams, my insides torn out until I am hollow," says Emma O’Donovan. When we first meet Emma, she is 18, full of life, and the most beautiful girl in Ballinatoom. By then end of Asking for It, she just wants to be erased, to fade away. This is because she has been brutally gang-raped and subsequently, when she goes public, subjected to an appalling campaign of vilification and humiliation. This is small town hypocrisy and sexism in the age of the smartphone.

  Louise O'Neill, whose debut YA novel was the witty and unsettling Only Ever Yours, takes the brave step of making Emma a vain and somewhat unpleasant character at the beginning. That's the point. Rape is the issue, not a debate about any character flaws of the victim. It's hard not to wince when reading the novel. "Slut. Bitch. Skank. Whore. You were asking for it," people post on her Facebook page. Graphic pictures taken during the assault are posted. Twenty boys who were in her kindergarten class rate her naked, abused body. "I looked at the marks to see what they really thought of me, And I wished I was dead."

  only ever yours
  Author Louise O'Neill (right) with actress Eva Longoria at the New York launch party for Only Ever Yours in September 2015

  The final 60 pages are powerful and distressing. We see the effects on her family life, as she weighs up whether to go through with a painful court case in a country where the rate of conviction for rape is only one per cent. She is depressed, full of guilt and having panic attacks. She doubts that her parents truly accept that it wasn't her fault. There is a heartbreaking moment when her mother witlessly refers to the rapists as being "good boys really, this just got out of hand". It's like a knife through Emma's heart. This is not an anti-man book, though. Two of the strongest, most sensitive, characters are t her friend Conor and her brother Bryan.

  The best YA books of 2015

  Asking for It is a brave and important book about rape culture, sexism and victim-blaming in modern society. Think for a moment, too, about this: it is estimated that around 85% of rapes are never even reported to the police in the first place. People should read Asking for It but be prepared for an ending that is as pitiful as it is honest.

• Germ
  http://www.germmagazine.com/review-asking-for-it-by-louise-oneill/
  Word count: 1019

  Image via Louise O’Neill
  About a year ago, I discovered the author Louise O’Neill. Her books have become
  some of my favourites, and I’d like to share why — not only because they’re
  addictively good, but because of their importance. I last reviewed Only Ever
  Yours, but this review is for O’Neill’s incredible, powerful Asking For It.
  This may be an even more important read than Only Ever Yours. It’s loosely based
  on the horriác Steubenville case of 2012 in America, but it’s set in small-town
  Ireland — where popular-but-bitchy Emma O’Donovan is gang-raped at a party.
  Afterwards, the local community rallies around her attackers, the town’s sport
  heroes. Why was she there? Why did she wear that dress? If she drank and took
  drugs, what did she expect? She was asking for it.
  The book never says whether Emma is or isn’t to blame. It never makes the
  decision for you, but it provides a clear exploration of every aspect of how she
  behaves, how she feels, and how she is treated.
  It didn’t catch me by surprise in the same way as Only Ever Yours because I had
  already thought a lot about these issues; I knew the storyline from reading too
  many reviews beforehand, and I’d heard the details of the Steubenville case years earlier. All this didn’t stop it from
  being a tough read, though.
  Although less gripping in terms of plot, this is a well-constructed and well-written portrayal of such an awful event.
  For one thing, the lasting effects of the attack on protagonist Emma are given just as much time as the lead-up and
  immediate aftermath. This is signiácant. Often, when we read these kinds of news stories, we shudder in our seats and
  it haunts us for a little while…and then we forget about it until the next tragic story. This book reminds us of the full
  impact of this kind of violence on victims.
  It shows us how the traumatic experience leaked into every part of Emma’s life. As readers, we watch her family fall
  apart. We see the repercussions for her father’s job. We see the cracks growing in her parents’ marriage. We see how
  hard it is for them to áght and keep ághting and keep ághting for a trial date that is put back to three years after the
  attack itself. We see them lose their place in a small community. There’s also some reference to the terror and stigma
  surrounding mental illness and the determined belief that all she needs to do is keep taking her pills. I found the
  effect on her family particularly devastating; there are moments when her own father can no longer look at her.
  Italics and brackets are used effectively throughout the book to show us what’s going on inside Emma’s head. The
  attack is always preying on her mind, whether it’s a memory of the event itself or agony over the comments on the
  photos and the reaction of friends and her community. Sometimes it’s as simple as: “My brother saw those photos, my
  father saw those photos…”
  Review: Asking For It by Louise O’Neill
  Apr 15, 2016
  Many of her thoughts are directed toward the day this will eventually go to court. Even though there is photographic
  evidence of everything that happened to her, even though those photos are all over the Internet, she knows full well
  there will be no simple conviction. She knows she will be under humiliating interrogation. There’ll be questions and
  insinuations and attacks on her character. All this horror surrounding the trial is what is referred to as the “second
  rape” — the trauma victim’s face on the witness stand that is one reason such a small fraction of rapes are ever even
  reported.
  Not to mention her case has attracted mainstream attention, so Emma has to read articles focusing on her attack,
  which say things like, “Women have to take responsibility for their own safety. If they are going to insist on wearing such
  revealing clothes, if they are going to insist on getting so drunk they can barely stand, then they must be prepared to bear
  the consequences.” Emma is already convinced that everything that is happening to her is her own fault, but even when
  she goes to the doctor after her attack, there is a poster on the wall saying, “One in three reported rapes happen when
  the victim is drinking.”
  Released last September, this book has had huge impacts on readers. There are people who, after reading it, have
  properly thought about the meaning of consent for the árst time. Author Louise O’Neill has shared that one survivor of
  abuse felt able to tell her story after reading Asking For It. #NotAskingForIt has been hugely active on Twitter. In fact,
  the conversation around consent is topical all over the Internet right now.
  And the more people who are a part of it, the better.
  Carol McGill lives in Dublin, where she makes to-do lists and then avoids doing things.
  However, she does occasionally have productive periods which result in things being
  written. She has found writing is an excellent way to procrastinate from schoolwork, which
  has increased drastically in recent times.
  Read her blog here.
  Germ Magazine guest author
  … is a contributing guest author for Germ, which means the following criteria (and then some)
  have been met: possessor of a fresh, original voice; creator of fresh, original content; genius
  storyteller; superlative speller; fantastic dancer; expert joke teller; handy with a toolbox; brilliant
  at parties; loves us as much as we love them.
  © 2015 Germ Magazine

• Her
  https://www.her.ie/life/book-review-asking-for-it-by-louise-oneill/256030
  Word count: 335

  Book Review: Asking For It by Louise O’Neill

  BY CASSIE DELANEY
  It’s summer time in small town Ireland and 18-year-old Emma O’Donovan is young and popular, albeit slightly hostile.

  She’s the object of affection for half the town and revels in delight at the stares of the opposite sex. She is, by most accounts, Cork’s answer to Regina George.

  One night there’s a party and fuelled by boredom, lust and carelessness, Emma consumes copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. She wakes on her porch the next day with no memories of the previous night.

  26218889._UY200_

  However, graphic photos taken at the party quickly illustrate what happened in devastating detail. The pictures are shared online and before long, Emma becomes the subject of a national debate about consent and seduction.

  Asking for It is a captivating look at rape culture in the digital age. It astutely poses questions about consent, responsibility and the sexuality of young women.

  Louise O’Neill’s insight in this novel is astounding. Her proficiency as a writer and commentator radiates from the pages and her treatment of the topic is spot on.

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  Emma is not a likeable character and O’Neill leverages this to add shade to the topical grey area of young female sexuality. The novel raises the issue of non consensual sex and bodes the question of whether a drunk young drug infused girl was “asking for it”.

  The novel lightly reflects true-life issues with multiple examples springing to mind. It’s enthralling to witness the series of events through the eyes of an unlikeable self-obsessed teen. Levels of sympathy towards Emma vary throughout and with fluctuating levels of blame and remorse; O’Neill’s portrayal of the issue is simply infatuating and certainly provoking.

  This is an absolute must-read for any one living in the digital age.

• Viva la Feminista
  http://www.vivalafeminista.com/2016/03/book-review-asking-for-it-by-louise.html
  Word count: 764

  Book Review: Asking for It by Louise O'Neill
  Monday, March 28, 2016 books, giveaway, reviews 14 comments
  CW: This book deals with the aftermath of a sexual assault from the survivor's point of view.

  I'm not going to beat around the bush, Asking for It by Louise O'Neill is intense.

  O'Neill artfully writes from inside the head of a rape survivor from days before the assault to a few years post. Emma O' Donovan, our protagonist, is not an outspoken feminist activist and for the most part, refuses to even think the word 'rape.' Her life is turned upside down, not just from the rape itself, but the aftermath is almost as tragic. Within feminist circles, we often bemoan the way the mainstream media covers rape cases, but Asking for It shows how feminist sites are eager for rape survivors to tell their side of the story as their own click bait. Emma is equally haunted by op-eds that state she is making it all up as well as the flood of requests from feminist sites and the trending supportive hashtags.
  #IBelieveBallinatoomGirl

  I don't want to be their champion.
  I don't want to be brave.
  I don't want to be a hero.

  As a YA book, the target audience is the high school and up crowd. I highly recommend this book for everyone who is a parent. And not because I think it will help you prevent the sexual assault of anyone, but because as a parent, the way Emma sees her parents post-assault is heartbreaking. As a parent, you may be tempted to take this book as manual for how to not to trust your daughter or to protect her from the world, but I beg you to read it as a manual on how to be a supportive parent.
  When did we all become fluent in this language
  that none of us wanted to learn?

  Asking for It presents the reader with a very imperfect victim. Emma is not a virgin, while she is still in high school she is 18 and is the quintessential party girl. She is everything that makes up the idea that someone "asks for it." And yet, throughout the book, if you are willing to be open to the idea, you are rooting for Emma to regain her life, triumph over the slut-shaming she endures and watch as her rapists are locked away. I won't spoil the book and say if any of this happens. In light of the recent Ghomeshi trial verdict and how the judge accused the survivors of not acting properly, this book is timely. Emma is not only not the ideal victim due to her sexual past, but she does not play the ideal victim afterwards.

  So many things make this an excellent read. O'Neill sets up Emma as a spoiled party girl, who even commits the sin of slut-shaming herself. In an early scene, she even talks down one of her girlfriend's date rape. She plots about how to bag the next of her trophies. She is beautiful and wields that beauty as a weapon. Knowing that she will be the victim of a rape makes you question all the dislike O'Neill sets up. As a feminist who knows all the tropes and stereotypes that we must fight to end rape culture, I still caught myself thinking all the things: "Don't keep drinking!" "Don't go in there!" Asking for It is a horror flick and you keep yelling at the book hoping to change the ending, but you know it is all for naught.

  There were definitely places in the book where I could not stop reading as well as places where I needed to walk away from the book for a bit. This book should not be an after school special warning for young women as to the dangers of excessive partying. Rather this book is a wake-up to those of us who want to support survivors or who are forced to support survivors. Seriously, her parents do this all wrong or at least Emma thinks they do. This book exemplifies why some survivors do nothing but "go on" with their lives. This book will stay with you long after you finish.

  Asking for It goes on sale April 5th. Please purchase your own copy of Asking for It from Powells or Indiebound and support Viva la Feminista.

  Disclaimer: I received a review copy from a publicist.

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