Asking For It

by: Louise O'Neill

*TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE*

It's the beginning of summer, and Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy and confident. One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma. The next day, she wakes on the front porch of her house. 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 great detail--exactly what happened to Emma that night. But sometimes people don't want to believe what's right in front of them, especially if the truth concerns the town heroes.
A brave, bold and important novel about sexual consent and betrayal, victim blaming and truth in the age of smartphones. {cover copy}
This is not a feel-good book. It is heavy and sad and angering and frustrating and triggering. But it was a really good book. I haven't read a book in two days since my daughter was born, I don't think, and this one I did. I even stayed up past midnight reading when I knew I was only going to get a few hours of sleep if I went to bed at 11. The main character starts out as an unlikeable character, but I soon became outraged for her and wanted to fight for her and was very much in her corner, though I wanted to slap her several times throughout the book for her personality pre- and post {as she puts it in the novel} that word. Also, I came to really dislike the core group of people who should have been supportive of her. I thought they did a crappy job. Except for one character, who was pretty much the only one who was doing and saying what I wanted them all to be doing and saying. But I understand. I understand that it is the point of this whole book. This is definitely worth a read. Though I warn you, it has me very worried about my daughter and her future and if I'll be a good enough mother to have made a strong enough daughter to persevere through anything life throws her way.

My mother's face appears in the mirror beside my own, bright red lips on powdered skin. {first line}
"It's superficial," I said, because that's what you're supposed to say when people tell you you're beautiful."

"If you're filming this, I will literally cut you."

"I am afraid to fall asleep. I am afraid of my dreams."

"The word fills the room, until there's nothing left, and all I can breathe is that word (rape) and all I can hear is that word (rape) and all I can smell is that word (rape) and all I can taste is that word (rape)."

"I bend over with the crippling pain of it, aware of nothing but the sobs hacking up through my chest and a blistering heat building behind my eyeballs, and I'm rocking back and forward. A bottomless grief."

"It is a process, and each step must be taken carefully. Alpen in bowl. Yogurt. Stir. I am focused on the present moment. Mindfulness, the therapist calls it. If I do this right, if I get every part of this right, maybe today will be OK."

"There are other ways to ruin lives. We were never warned about those."

"I am not falling apart. I am being ripped at the seams, my insides torn out until I am hollow."

"Was there always this much of {don't say the word, don't say that word ever again} before, on TV and on the radio, and in songs and in movies and in the papers and I just never noticed?"

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

"How is it that two eyes, a nose and a mouth can be positioned in such varying ways that it makes one person beautiful, and another person not? What if my eyes had been a fraction closer together? Or if my nose had been flatter? My lips thinner, or my mouth too wide? How would my life have been different?"

• girl • {last word}
{view on Goodreads}