Louise O’Neill
Louise O’Neill is represented by Juliet Mushens
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.
Louise’s latest novel, Idol, was published in May 2022 by Transworld.
Praise for Only Ever Yours:
‘Gripping ... like all the best dystopias, Only Ever Yours is about the world we live in now’ — Irish Times
‘The Handmaid's Tale meets Mean Girls’ — The Vagenda
‘Utterly magnificent ... gripping, accomplished and dark’ — Marian Keyes
‘Deserves to be read by young and old, male and female, the world over in the same way Harry Potter and The Hunger Games were’ — Sunday Independent
‘A dark dream. A vivid nightmare. The world O'Neill imagines is frightening because it could come true. She writes with a scalpel.’ — Jeanette Winterson
‘Deep, dark and frighteningly believable, this book will stay with you for a long time’ — Marie Claire
‘Compelling writing ... this only-too-real dystopia grips from beginning to end’ — SFX
‘Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale with a post-millennial twist’ — The Journal.ie
‘The bleakness of The Catcher in the Rye, the satire of The Stepford Wives and it made me recall Nineteen Eighty-Four ... a fresh and original talent’ — Irish Independent
‘Terrifying but captivating’ — Company
Praise for Almost Love:
‘Powerful and intense. O’Neill is one of our most uncompromising authors.’ — John Boyne
‘A real, raw story of how a woman's yearning for a potent relationship can poison happiness but help her discover the shadowy parts of herself. Louise O’Neill will once again connect to the secret, intimate places of readers’ minds and lives.’ — Cecelia Ahern
‘In Almost Love, the author unpicks, with a pen sharp as needles, the kind of obsessive love to which nobody is immune: I would challenge any reader to turn the final page without having flushed, at least once, in recognition. Yet her gaze is unflinching, but never cruel; we are invited to examine, but never judge. O'Neill is a vital and necessary presence in contemporary literature, and we are lucky to have her.’ — Sarah Perry
‘A bold, uncompromising depiction of obsession and obsessive love. Reinvents the template for the female protagonist. Modern, uncomfortable, ultimately moving.’ — Marian Keyes
‘Superb pockets of relatable truths . . . one of Ireland’s most astute social observers’ — Irish Independent
‘Breaks another boundary that women’s fiction rarely approaches’ — Irish Times
‘O’Neill is a perceptive, empathetic writer, her astute exploration of a toxic relationship laced with a primal scream of fury at the role and status of women in society’ — Express.co.uk
‘A brave and uncompromising exploration of love in all its guises, this book redefines the very concept of so-called “romantic fiction” – it’s a story we will genuinely never forget’ — Heat
Rights:
Idol: Transworld (UK) and Eksmo (Russia).