Asking For It by Louise O'Neill – review

‘A soul–shattering novel that will leave your emotions raw. This story will haunt me forever’

Jeanette Winterson said O’Neill ‘writes with a scalpel’ and, reading this book, I see it couldn’t be more true. Each page packs the emotional punch of a small fire engine, tearing and scraping away bits of your heart. By the end of the novel, I’d had run out of tissues, tears and hope.

Emma O’Donovan is 18, young, happy and the most beautiful girl in Ballinatoom. She has her whole life ahead of her – university, a family, a future – until one night, one party, snatches all that away. The morning after the night before she wakes up on her doorstop. She doesn’t know how she got there, doesn’t know why it hurts. But everyone else does. Pictures scattered on social media show in horrific detail the events of that night. They say she is a slut. They say it was her fault. They say she was asking for it. Sometimes Emma doesn’t know what to believe…

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