When Asking For It was first released back in August 2015, the reaction to the book’s depiction of sexual violence and rape culture seemed to depend largely on your own individual story. For many, it was a truly eye-opening insight into society’s dismissive treatment of sexual assault. For others, an all-too-familiar account of events that hit close to home.

The first section of the novel follows the interior monologue of 18-year-old Emma O’Donovan over the course of several days, before she’s gang raped at a party by people she knows. Pictures of the assault are shared on social media after the incident and the character is vilified as ‘Easy Emma’. The second section, told a year on, follows her attempts to come to terms with the events, as well as showing a myriad of responses to the rape from her family, her community, the Irish legal system, and Irish society in general. It’s a harrowing, relentless journey into the mindset of an individual who has had wrong done unto her, but who, because of society’s perspective on sexual assault, believes herself to be at fault. Understandably, the book has generated an enormous reaction.

“When Asking For It was first published, a lot of people said, ‘You’ve started this conversation’,” Louise tells me from her home in West Cork. “I don’t think that’s true. People in Ireland were ready to have this conversation for a long time and that the work that has been going on in sexual violence centres and on the ground has paved the way for someone like me to come along.

“In a sense though, a book is an easy way into this, because it’s fiction and there’s a protection there. It’s not as uncomfortable as discussing a real life case. But I think Ireland was ready to have this conversation when the book came out, especially because it has such a history of sexual abuse and poor treatment of victims.”

Early reviews of the novel called it “necessary”, which Louise took as a tragic vindication of the purpose of her work.

“I really wish it wasn’t the case,” she says. “I first had the idea in 2014, then the book came out a year later, and it feels like every day someone sends me an article with something that could’ve been taken from Asking For It. That’s the reality of the world we live in.”

The issues in the book reached a wider audience back in November, when Louise O’Neill collaborated with RTÉ to produce a documentary inspired by the novel, which saw the author tackle issues of sexual assault, consent and rape culture. And while she has been rightly celebrated for her work in developing our understanding of these issues, O’Neill confesses that it’s been vital to separate herself in the public and private spheres.

“You have to distance yourself from people’s responses,” she admits, “because it’s a little overwhelming when people have a strong reaction to it. The only way I can explain it is that, sometimes I feel like I’m faking. Normally if someone’s had quite a strong reaction to it, it’s because they’ve had an experience of sexual violence, and it really strongly resonates with them.

“That makes me feel like a fraud because they might see me as someone who has answers and who can help in some way. And as much as I’d love to say I have the answers, I was just a person who wrote a story. So there was a part of me that, very early on after it was published, for my own self-preservation, had to have an emotional distance between myself and the book, so that I didn’t see it as an extension of me.”

While she might have occasional feelings of fraudulence, O’Neill certainly did extensive research to give the novel its realism.

“Asking For It was difficult in a very particular way,” she explains, “because I completely immersed myself in a character and what she was going through. I thought about what she would feel like and imagined how these things would manifest themselves in her. The second half of the book took three months to write, and during that time I was having nightmares about being raped because I was so involved in the story. I’d spoken to so many victims – in the Sexual Violence Centre in Cork – and I was reading so many memoirs and a lot of non-fiction around rape and sexual abuse.

“It’s hard to just shrug that off. I suppose, as well, my first book Only Ever Yours was dystopian fiction and dealt with the beauty myth, and that was obviously very serious. But with Asking For It, I felt like I knew so many women who had had personal experiences like the one I was depicting. I knew this was such a pervasive issue in our culture, and that most women had been affected in one way or another. And I was so afraid of getting it wrong; afraid of someone saying, ‘Oh that couldn’t have happened’, or ‘You’ve made what I’m going through worse because of your lack of understanding.’

“I was really afraid of fucking it up, so I wanted to make myself as involved as possible. It was such a relief when it came out, and people who’d had experiences turned to me and said, ‘This feels realistic.’”

Just days before our interview, Louise got word that Asking For It is to be made into a stage production, which she warmly welcomes.

“Theatre was my first love,” she enthuses. “I always wanted to be an actress when I was a child. We have a really good amateur drama society in Kilmeen, very close to where I live. That’s where I was first exposed to theatre. So to see something that I’ve written be adapted for stage, particularly with a company as prestigious as Landmark – who are behind Enda Walsh’s shows – is really exciting. It’s in conjunction with the Abbey Theatre too, so to have our national theatre involved is incredible. They’re going to have the premiere in The Everyman in Cork, so it’s like the story’s coming full circle.”

I ask Louise whether she’s going to play a role in the creation of the play, but she says that, in-between being involved in the production of a three-part TV adaption of Asking For It, working on the screenplay for the film adaption of Only Ever Yours, and finishing up her third novel (set to be released in March 2018), she’s happy to hand over the reins to others.

“The people who are involved are going to do such a phenomenal job that I don’t think my involvement is necessary. I’m hoping to just rock up to the premiere wearing something fabulous and enjoy the fruits of their labour.”