Rape In Life and in the World of YA Fiction

I've written about Young Adult (YA) fiction previously, in large part because it is reportedly about the only literary genre experiencing significant growth in sales. As such, it has attracted a lot of attention and various established authors who previously ignored this segment of the market have started to write for it.

These are not children's stories. No topics are off limits and perhaps partially as a result of that, lots of adults are said to be readers of these books, too.


The April 10, 2016, New York Times Book Review section addressed YA fiction in it's weekly feature known as "The Shortlist," where someone writes brief reviews of four books that fall within a particular category. The reviewer this time around was Jeff Giles, the author of a YA novel called "The Edge of Everything," scheduled to be published in January 2017. He was perhaps predictably enthusiastic about all four titles, but one of them jumped out at me in particular: "Asking For It," by Irish author Louise O'Neill.

It got my attention because I had just read the NYT "Modern Love" column of the same date in which a woman named Caroline Hurwitz, a junior at Colegate University, tells the story of how she was raped while in high school and how that affected her life, and in particular, the relationship that she had with a different young man with whom she had earlier fallen in love.

It's a difficult tale in part because readers eventually learn that man accused of rape was found not guilty.

Turning to fiction, "Asking For It," as described by Giles, is a book about which grown-ups should try to be brave. "Teenagers will recognize its difficult truths and devour it -- behind your backs if need be."

The book, says Giles, is about a gorgeous, snobbish, boyfriend-stealing 18-year-old Irish girl "who wields her sexuality like someone wearing a gun." After drinking heavily at a party and apparently ingesting a drug, she is gang raped. Even though she remembers nothing of what happened, she is traumatized and the book goes on to describe how that affects her life.

"Emma (the protagonist) always seem incontrovertibly real. What's terrifying is that the world she lives in -- full of misogyny and deep communal denial -- does too," Giles concludes.

With sexual assault, and the exact meaning of "yes" and "no" getting at lot of attention at present, most visibly on college campuses, both the NYT column and the book are probably worth considering.