DD BOOKS: ASKING FOR IT BY LOUISE O’NEILL
It’s the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O’Donovan is eighteen years old, a fifth year student, beautiful, happy, confident. One night, there’s a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma.
The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can’t remember what happened, she doesn’t know how she got there. She doesn’t know why she’s in pain. But everyone else does.
Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened to Emma that night.
But sometimes people don’t want to believe what is right in front of them, especially when the truth concerns the town’s heroes.
Asking For It is about what happens to Emma O’Donovan after she is raped at a party by a group of boys on the school football team.
It also looks at how Emma is treated by her own communing in the aftermath of the assault.
She doesn’t understand what’s happened to her, until photos of that night are shared on Facebook.
Author Louise O’Neill doesn’t hold back in this novel and it makes for grim, painful reading.
However, one of the most interesting and important aspects of the novel is how it makes the reader question their own beliefs and attitudes.
Asking For It opens up debate and discussion about rape, sex assaults and attitudes to them.
It is an important book for this reason alone.
Asking For It,paperback, published by Quercus, €9.99.
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