95 Books Like Asking For It

This selection is a bit of a cheat, given that the novel is about a mother and son (as told by Jack, the 5-year-old boy), but it’s also a moving evocation of maternal resilience under the most appalling circumstances.

I include it because this exceptional story strips bare the fundamental ties between a helpless child and a fiercely resourceful parent. And it’s a great read.

Privilege, entitlement, politics, and sleaze, it’s all here, along with the disturbing sense that many perpetrators get away with far too many misdeeds for most of their lives, while their victims’ lives are instantly thrown into crisis. It’s a solid, twisty psychological thriller with hints of the Bullingdon Club and Westminster bad behaviour.

This book is a haunting and provocative exploration of power, manipulation, and the lasting scars of trauma. Kate Elizabeth Russell masterfully delves into the nuances of coercion, consent, and the ways in which trauma can shape identity, crafting a deeply unsettling yet unforgettable narrative that lingers long after the final page.

When I finished this book I had to sit in the dark and just process my thoughts. My next thought was to read the book again and to be seared all over again by the events. For an exploration of sexual abuse, it never succumbs to any gratuitous or cheap trick scenes. A book that needed to be written.

This novel was once lauded as an “ultimate feminist fantasy” and is about Bella, a woman who’s eventually had enough of being a victim and sets about murdering sleazy men.

I remember how this novel and author lost some respect when the book was picked up by film director Michael Winner (of Death Wish movies fame).

Winner went on to play fast and loose, adapting it into serial killer schlock. But. Don’t let that put you off as this novel is far better, more witty, and funny than any Winner movie.

It fulfils the fantasy of what (every now and then) a woman might love to do to any man who “done her wrong”. Surely a blueprint for serial killer and assassin Villanelle?

Rebel Knot is set in 17th-century Ireland, torn apart by religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. This is a war-ravaged Ireland, a land where hope is in short supply and peace is more of a dream than a possibility. And yet, in the midst of all that violence fragile love can flourish—even between people who belong on opposite sides of the religious fence. Ms. Bazos does a fantastic job of transporting the reader back in time, and her two main characters, Niall and Ainé, are wonderfully complex and relatable. The harshness of the times is vividly depicted—as is the growing attraction between the innocent and traumatised Ainé and her new protector, Niall. 

Revolutionary historians are familiar with the Townshend Acts, import duties approved by Parliament in 1767 that pushed the Americans closer toward independence. Patrick Griffin explores the man for who the taxes were named—Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend—but also his brother George who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1767 to 1772. By comparing and contrasting these two brothers who ran the British Empire for a brief moment, Griffin invites us to consider the American Revolution within its imperial context. I found the parallels between America where independence efforts succeeded and Ireland where they failed particularly thought-provoking. 

I love this novel so much that I named my son Phineas in homage.

Anthony Trollope might seem the ur-English novelist because of his much-loved series of Barhhester novels set among clerics in a provincial town, but he spent much of his working life in Ireland and wrote passionately about the country in many of his books.

Phineas Finn is a kind of alter ego, a young Irishman equipped with charm, good looks, and very little money. He becomes a Member of Parliament and sets out to find his way through the challenges and dilemmas of high society in Victorian London. His moral compass sometimes goes slightly awry, but it generally comes right in the end.

Trollope’s psychological subtlety draws out the ambiguities and prejudices that Phineas encounters and reminds us of the central part played by Ireland in the British Empire. He died long before Ireland’s separation from Britain,… show more.

I like the way that Miller chooses to see “ordinary” immigrants through their personal letters, diaries, songs, and poems. I think that researchers who confine themselves to official archives miss so much of the color and vibrancy of personal experiences in real life.

Miller is a highly respected academic, which makes it all the more impressive that he has dipped deep to paint a broad picture of Irish immigrants who have crossed the Atlantic and settled in America.

This fine introduction to both the Irish themselves, and their tortured history, was first published in 1947 by this respected commentator. The only way to really understand Ireland is to dissect the many distinctive population groups -- their peculiarities of religion, social outlook, political ambitions, and allegiances --  and then to see how the mixture of these complex streams determined the country's history, with positive but also calamitous results over many centuries. O'Faolain deals with the indigenous Celts, the interloping Normans, the increasingly acquisitive English, and how the tumultuous interactions between them produced the core of Irish society: its peasantry, the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the clergy, politicians, rebels, writers, and dreamers. The only thing O'Faolain missed, because he didn't live to see it, was the emergent, and now dominant, middle class of the Celtic Tiger. A beautifully written book. 

This fictionalized account of the infamous Grace O’Malley’s life heavily impacted the creation of the main character of Windfall, Captain Liana Foley. I loved how Llywelyn wrote Grace/Grania as a leader, thief, lover, and mother, giving depth to the legendary pirate. She portrays her as equally powerful as she is human.