Idol by O'Neill, Louise | Penguin Random House South Africa

Idol

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O'Neill, Louise

ISBN

9781787635340

Format

Trade Paperback

Recommended Price

R350.00

Published

June 2022

About the book:

Idol is fresh, glamorous, and surprising, taking an issue we all care about and with a deft twist, recalibrating our position. It dazzles us before revealing the darkness at its heart. Louise O'Neill is not afraid to take on a taboo but somehow always makes it utterly compelling. This is such an exciting book.' - Marian Keyes

'Follow your heart and speak your truth.'

For Samantha Miller's young fans - her 'girls' - she's everything they want to be. She's an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their 'truth'.

And her career is booming: she's just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she's appearing at sell-out events.

Determined to speak her truth and bare all to her adoring fans, she's written an essay about her sexual awakening as a teenager, with her female best friend, Lisa. She's never told a soul but now she's telling the world. The essay goes viral.

But then - years since they last spoke - Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn't remember it that way at all. Her memory of that night is far darker. It's Sam's word against Lisa's - so who gets to tell the story? Whose 'truth' is really a lie?

'You put yourself on that pedestal, Samantha. You only have yourself to blame.'

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About the Author

Louise O'Neill grew up in Clonakilty, a small town in West Cork, Ireland. Her first novel, Only Ever Yours, was released in 2014. Only Ever Yours went on to win the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year at the 2014 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards; the Children’s Books Ireland Eilís Dillon Award for a First Children’s Book; and The Bookseller‘s inaugural YA Book Prize 2015.

Louise’s second novel, Asking For It, was published in September 2015 to widespread critical acclaim. She went on to win the Specsaver’s Senior Children’s Book of the Year at the 2015 Irish Book Awards, the Literature Prize at Irish Tatler’s Women of the Year Awards, and the American Library Association's Michael L. Printz award. Asking For It was voted Book of the Year at the Irish Books Awards 2015 and spent 52 consecutive weeks in the Irish top 10 bestseller list. The New York Times called it "riveting and essential" and The Guardian named O' Neill "the best YA fiction writer alive today." Both novels have been optioned for screen.

O'Neill's first novel for adults, Almost Love, was published in March 2018, followed shortly by The Surface Breaks, her feminist re-imagining of The Little Mermaid which was released in May 2018.

Her second novel for adults, After the Silence, was published in September 2020 and spent six weeks in the top three of the Irish book charts.