Asking For It: the haunting novel from a celebrated voice in feminist fiction

by Louise O'Neill

'A soul-shattering novel that will leave your emotions raw. This story will haunt me forever. Everyone should read it' Guardian

In a small town where everyone knows everyone, Emma O'Donovan is different. She is the special one - beautiful, popular, powerful. And she works hard to keep it that way.

Until that night . . .

Now, she's an embarrassment. Now, she's just a slut. Now, she is nothing.

And those pictures - those pictures that everyone has seen - mean she can never forget.

For fans of Caitlin Moran, Marian Keyes and Jodi Picoult.

BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2015. The award-winning, bestselling novel about the life-shattering impact of sexual assault, rape and how victims are treated.

• ISBN10: 1848668201
• ISBN13: 9781848668201
• Publish Date: 3 September 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Quercus Publishing
• Imprint: riverrun
• Edition: Digital original
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.

— A raw and honest book about rape culture and the many ways people put the blame on the victim. This is just so infuriating and sad.

[Kait ✨]

trigger warning: rape

wow, what a hard book to rate/review. it chronicles the experience of eighteen-year-old emma o’donovan, who is raped at a party. it’s not a spectacularly well-written book (though o’neill does some interesting things with the narrative voice) or a particularly well-plotted book (though it’s not one of those books where “nothing happens”). i think a lot of people will/do take issue with this book because the emma o’donovan we meet at the beginning of the book is, to be frank, a real “mean girl”—she’s cruel, judgemental, selfish, and rude. emma’s promiscuous, does drugs and drinks a lot of alcohol, and doesn’t respond to being raped in the way that society expects; in this sense, o’neill really gets into the issues that are so hotly debated about rape and rape culture. for this reason, i do think it’s an incredibly important book because it brings up an issue that desperately needs to be discussed more openly.

in an afterword, louise o’neill writes, “we need to talk about rape. we need to talk about consent. we need to talk about victim blaming and slut shaming and the double standards we place upon our young men and women. we need to talk and talk and talk until the emmas of this world feel supported and understood. until they feel like they are believed.”

this book is so incredibly difficult to read, but that’s why you should read it. i can’t speak from experience, thankfully, but to me, asking for it seems to be a brutally honest portrayal of what it’s like to cope with this kind of trauma in circumstances that are, unfortunately, all too common. (for me, it brought to mind the recent jian ghomeshi case and the stanford rape case o’neill might not get everything right, but she is one of very few people in the world taking a public, vocal stance on this.

i read this book based on the recommendation of two youtube videos, one by rosianna halse rojas, and one by hannah witton, leena normington and lucy moon. their videos are intelligent and thought-provoking, and you should watch them, too, if you’re so inclined.

[shannonmiz]

This review was originally posted on It Starts at Midnight
How do I even begin to beseech you to read this? Perhaps you remember back in the day when I said you needed to read Louise's debut, Only Ever Yours for a lot of the same reasons I am going to talk about here. Here's the main difference: the content of Only Ever Yours was a bit of a dystopian version of a present day awfulness. In Asking For It, it is straight up present day awfulness. The events in this book are not only plausible, but they are happening. This isn't a "what if?" or a "worst-case scenario". This is our society, this is where we live.

Emma is our main character. Emma sucks. If you met Emma on the street, she'd probably point at you, make fun of your shirt, and then sleep with your boyfriend. But there are reasons. Oh, there are reasons. First, Emma's parents aren't really the greatest example of human parenting themselves. Mom is... vain. So it's no wonder that Emma is obsessed with her hair and makeup and such. Because Mom basically judges her on that shit alone. Dad seems okay, not as annoying as the mom. (Seems is the operative word at this point.)  And of course, Emma's core friend group isn't exactly sitting around doing volunteer work and hugging kittens either.

So on a usual night, Emma's at a party. Drinking, kind of sloppy. And takes something (drug related) that a guy offers. And then decides to sleep with him. But she feels "off". And then... everything goes black. I won't go into all the details, but she doesn't even know what happened until pictures appear online. Let me make this even clearer: there are explicit pictures, of Emma unconscious and being raped by several (yes, several) boys at the party. Photographs tell the tale here, and there should be no further debate, right? Sadly, that isn't the case. In fact, when the pictures were uploaded to social media, people made comments by the dozens- by the hundreds in some cases. And were they of outrage at this girl being assaulted? Oh, no. They were comments about Emma's body, her personality. Rude and vulgar and downright evil comments akin to a virtual high-five to the boys.

I am not even going to talk semantics here- this is rape. I hope everyone reading this knows that. The people in Emma's town do not all know that. Hell, the people in Emma's damn family do not all know that. And her case (the case even Emma herself didn't know if she wanted to pursue) captures the attention of media around the world.

There are people who absolutely agree that Emma has been raped and that this is not okay. But an alarming number of people don't. Even more alarming, they blame Emma, the victim. For asinine reasons like "she was drunk" and "boys can't control themselves" and "she had consensual sex before" and "she dressed provocatively".  Examples, from various sources:

"Come on. No one forced the drink down her throat or made her take shit. And what guy was going to say no if it was handed to him on a plate?" She laughs. "She was fucking asking for it."

"You can spout all the nonsense you like about equal rights, but the truth is- women have to take responsibility for themselves and 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."

And these gems from her own mother and father, respectively:

"They're good boys, really. This all just got out of hand."

"'Why did you drink so much, Emmie? Why were you in that bed in the first place, Emmie? I thought you knew better. I thought we had reared you better than that. Why, Emmie?' He kept asking, and asking, and asking, only stopping when I started to cry. 'Crocodile tears,' he snapped. 'Oh, just get out of my sight. I can't stand to look at you.'"

Yeah, this was the consensus of most of the town. And the rage it filled me with was palpable. Because you know what was beneath Emma? Beneath the girl who was impossibly vain and irresponsible and not kind to others? A human being. A young woman who had been violated in such an unimaginable way, who now had to be violated all over again by these statements that came from friends, family, the media. Who was advocating for her while she silently fought these demons? Almost no one.

Do you know why you need to read this book? Because until one hundred percent of people agree that what happened to a woman in this circumstance was absolutely, unequivocally rape, there will be a problem in our society. Emma's story is fictional, but the concept of  a woman"asking for it" is anything but. No one "asks" to be raped. No. One. To say that anyone could or would is demeaning to women as a whole, but especially to the women who've lived through such a heinous act.

And consent isn't a blurry line. It's a solid black line that needs only ask "was the person able to give consent while not under duress?" and if you can't say that, there was no consent given. It isn't even a close call in Emma's case- she wasn't conscious enough to say no or to stop her attackers. I don't really care how she got unconscious. Alcohol, drug use, it wouldn't have mattered if she had hit her own self in the head- once she was unconscious, her ability to consent to anything went out the window.

You need to read this book because the number of women (and men, in smaller numbers) who have gone through this is staggering. There are some statistics here and here that will make you ill. Based on these numbers, it's almost certain that you know or will know someone in your life who has been affected by rape. And we need to be able to hold ourselves to a much higher standard when it comes to both the care for these victims and the prosecution of the perpetrators. We need to educate people before these crimes take place. There's so much more that can be done, and Asking For It tells you why it's absolutely imperative to do so. We owe it to ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbors, and all the Emmas of the world to not turn a blind eye, to not blame the victim, to not praise the attackers. This book reminds us not to jump on a bandwagon of hate. And most importantly, is a terrible reminder of how much harder we need to work at eliminating this kind of thought process.

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

Before I start this review, I feel I should give some context about my love of Louise O'Neill's first book, and my anticipation for this one. People who follow me on Twitter and Once Upon a Bookcase will know by now what a huge fan I am of O'Neill's debut novel, Only Ever Yours. It affected me hugely, and I still rave about it to anyone who will listen, almost a year after first reading it. Even now, I'll remember something I read in those pages and something new will occur to me, making me think. Reading Only Ever Yours was a major turning point for me in terms of understanding society's treatment of women, and put me firmly on a feminist path. It blew me away, and I will continue to push it into the hands of everyone I can for being such a important, powerful and brilliant novel.

So you can understand how I have been eagerly waiting for Asking For It, O'Neill's second novel. I have just finished, and there are no words to describe how in awe I am of O'Neill. Asking For It is even more incredible than Only Ever Yours.

When Emma attends a house party, she expects it to be just like any other. She'll drink, she'll dance, she'll have fun, and she will be the most beautiful girl there. Girls will be jealous, and boys won't be able to take their eyes off her - as it is where ever she goes. She can have her pick of any of the boys, and that's just how she likes it. What Emma doesn't expect is to wake up the next morning on her front porch with no recollection of the events of the night before or how she got there. She doesn't expect her best friends to turn their backs on her. She doesn't expect the looks, the whispers, the malicious disgust-filled slurs thrown at her from everyone at school. She doesn't expect the photos, the explicit, degrading photos, that appear on Facebook. And, as she discovers what happened to her, the last thing Emma expects is for complete strangers to lay blame at her feet.

Asking For It is split into two parts; the first, the days leading up and immediately after the rape, and those same days a year later. I did not like Emma, but I could see the reasons for her being as she was. She had been brought up being told she was beautiful. Everyone told her so. Her mother ingrained it into her that being beautiful was important, and so her sense of worth was based on how she looked. Therefore she must be the prettiest at all times, and others must think she's the prettiest - she must be wanted, must be desired. Not only does she feel entitled to the attention she receives, but she needs it - who is she otherwise? I did not like her. But after she's raped - the rape she can't remember - she completely changes, becoming a mere shell of who she used to be. Despite how much I disliked her, it was unbelievably heartbreaking to see this change.

When Emma - and us readers - discover what happened to her, it's horrific. Realising that she was violated, raped, but also that photo after photo after photo was taken of her while it was happening, that these photos were put online, that everyone had seen them, and people were leaving such disgusting comments about her, about her body... being with her for this is so unbelievably hard. My heart bled for her, and I was feeling so much I had to stop reading. It was so painful, it was raw.It hurt so much, I was beyond being able to cry. I just sat there struggling with this unimaginable situation Emma was in, as her whole world crumbled at her feet.

And then things got worse. Not only did this happen to her, not only were those photos taken and seen by everyone, people blamed her. At the time it happened, and a year on. Emma made some bad decisions; she drank excessively and she took drugs. Because of this, and the short and low-cut dress she was wearing, people blamed her for what happened. The overheard conversations, the comments on the photos, the emails she was sent. The people discussing the "Ballinatoom Case" online, on radio, on TV, in newspapers. What did she expect? She was asking for it. The rage I felt! No-one seemed to realise that it doesn't matter what she was wearing, how much she drank, that she took drugs. No-one seemed to realise that she should be able to do these things without fear that she would be attacked and have control of her body taken away from her. The disgusting things people said, the excuses they made for Emma's attackers, the sympathy they had for them. Even the system, which seems to go in favour of the rapist than the victim! I got so angry! Then I got so scared, so, so scared. This is a story, fiction - but it's not. This happens; people are raped, and then they are sometimes blamed. People side with the guilty. Normal, every day people side with the rapists.

Reading about the immediate aftermath of Emma's rape was bad enough, but seeing how she was being treated a year later, the brilliant light O'Neill shines on rape culture, it's terrifying. Because you hear about it, and you know how disgusting it is, but until you see it through the eyes of the victim, I don't think we can really understand. And my heart broke. For Emma, for everyone who has been through this, for everyone who chose to suffer in silence rather than be on the receiving end of all this... . For everyone who has had the control of their body forcibly removed from them, degraded, violated, and told it was their own fault. The anger, the fear, the sadness. It's almost enough to make you lose hope in humanity.

But then you have O'Neill, and people like her, who give you hope by doing what they can to fight against rape culture. I have absolutely no doubt that Asking For It will do just what Only Ever Yours did. People will buy it, read it, talk about it... and it will make people think. It will open people's eyes. They will be as deeply affected as I have been. They will also get angry - because there is no-way anyone can read this and not get angry - and Asking For It will spread like wildfire. Because it's undeniably important and unbelievably powerful. And I believe, while it spreads, Asking For It will change lives.

Thank you to Quercus for the proof.