From the Bookshelf of Diversity in All Forms!…

Asking For It

Louise O'Neill

Start date: September 1, 2016

Finish date: September 30, 2016

Discussion leader: Mariah Roze

Why we're reading this: September Group Read- Gender Stereotypes
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Sep 13, 2022 Nina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: abuse, fiction, young-adult, health, feminism, irish, contemporary

Asking for it is one of those books that left me with more questions than answers. And it was Louise O’Neill’s intention to do so.

Emma, the main character, has it all, several seemingly good friends, a nice family with an upper middle class background and she is close to her final exams and is an excellent student.
As a character, Emma is not very likable to begin with. She is adored for her great looks, but comes over as rather arrogant and calculating, fully aware of the effect she has on oth Asking for it is one of those books that left me with more questions than answers. And it was Louise O’Neill’s intention to do so.

Emma, the main character, has it all, several seemingly good friends, a nice family with an upper middle class background and she is close to her final exams and is an excellent student.
As a character, Emma is not very likable to begin with. She is adored for her great looks, but comes over as rather arrogant and calculating, fully aware of the effect she has on others. This changes dramatically after a party where she is drugged and raped by different perpetrators. She does not remember anything the next day, and plays things down. Not willing to admit that she doesn’t know she even says that sex during the party was consensual. However, within short time, pictures and film snippets appear on social media, and they show that Emma was probably not even able to consent to anything. The police starts investigating, and finally Emma presses charges too.
What follows is a slump downwards from a well-liked young woman who had a great future ahead of her to an isolated and frightened woman who cannot cope with the situation at all. The plot jumps forward and you learn that attempted suicide and self injury have become part of her journey. She hates therapy, behaves in ways any traumatized woman is likely to behave and simply cannot cope with the situation she finds herself in. Her alleged friends have left her, she is blamed for the whole situation, the future of the group of young men who raped her is in jeopardy and the small community her family lives in has already decided that Emma is a slut and everything is her fault, after all, why did she drink so much and why did she take illegal drugs, right? Emma’s desperation grows, and her thoughts circle around suicide again, which becomes worse when even her parents wish Emma would drop the charges because everything has become too straining for them.

The story continues a little more, but I do not want to give the ending away, and I definitely recommend reading the short afterword. This is what I found extremely powerful in the light of the story and in a concise form it shows the major problem girls and women face up to this day after experiencing sexual assault in its different forms: there is a double standard for girls and boys, and O’Neill demands a discussion about consent, victim blaming and slut shaming.

There are some pros and cons about this title. I disliked the style this title was written. It is supposed to be some sort of young adult language I suppose but I found it annoying. In some moments I would have wished that moving from one part of the plot to the next would have been made easier. It was confusing a few times, not enough that it made me put away the book, though. There were quite a lot of names out of the neighbourhood or from wherever, and I wondered repeatedly how important they might really be. If it had been a tv show it might have been ok, but in the book I would have preferred fewer of the unimportant characters.

Nevertheless, this book definitely tells a story, and it does that in a way that is not far away from what could happen in reality. I absolutely hated how real some passages of Emma’s growing doubts and her slow spiralling down into despair, felt. Without too many graphic details, O’Neill did not sugar coat at all what could and what does happen to girls and women too often after being raped. They are blamed by those they think they know and can rely on, they are shamed and have to defend against public opinion and too often will find themselves very isolated, hopeless and wondering what their mistake might have been, after all they were raped, and they were not ‘asking for it’; there was no consent.

Since I believe stories like this need to be told, I recommend this book. I subtract one star for some annoying language, too many minor characters and confusing transitions in a few passages.
4 out of 5 stars

Trigger warning
The plot of this book is about a case of rape and there are details given that are disturbing, not only concerning the rape but also in the main character’s thinking. For people who have experienced sexual assault this might easily be triggering.
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Aug 09, 2016 Mariah Roze rated it liked it

Shelves: hometown-book-clubs, diversity-in-all-forms-book-club

I read this book for the goodreads' book club Diversity in All Forms. (If you want to participate in the discussion the link is below).
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I also read this book for my Young Women's Hometown Book Club (it worked out nicely).

I enjoyed the read but at times it dragged on. I felt like I was enjoying it more than normal because the discussions that were taking place with the book were very good and captivating, but the book itself had a lot of dull moments.
I real ...more

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May 24, 2017 Darby rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

I'm having a hard time figuring out a star rating for this because I just hated everyone so much. Emma treated all of her friends like shit and her mom was such a rude hypocritical bitch. ...more

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