Every teen should be made to read Louise O’Neill's book 'Asking For It'

Having done my Leaving the year she was born , I hadn’t heard of the writer Louise O’Neill until I was mooching in a bookshop the other day. I randomly picked up Asking For It — largely because of Jeanette Winterson’s recommendation on the cover — and read it almost in one go.

It’s about rape. Not the kind of rape we think of when we think about rape — the unknown attacker, the dark alley — but the kind that actually happens. Where the woman knows the man or men. According to Amnesty International, Ireland has the lowest rape conviction rate — 1% — in the EU. One percent? I didn’t know that until I read O’Neill’s novel. One percent. A figure that is like some grotesque punchline.

Asking For It should be read in schools. It is about real teenagers living now in real — made up characters, obviously, as it’s fiction — but modern teenagers living in modern with Snapchat and Facebook and Instagram and MDMA and vodka and little idea about what consent means. It’s the story of a good looking teenager, vain and self obsessed and insecure and desperate to be seen as cool by the older crowd (because we shouldn’t have to like rape victims in order to convict rapists). It’s how she drinks and takes drugs and has lots of consensual sex. She’s not the Virgin Mary.