Idol: The must read, addictive and compulsive book club thriller of the summer

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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? I've lived in this city long enough to know that the only thing these people can't forgive is poverty. If you have enough money, they'll forget everything." 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 You see influencers who have become famous because they have really great fashion taste, or they have a beautiful home, or they’re a wellness influencer. This is their area of expertise. And now all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘excuse me, I want to know what you think about the geopolitical situation in Ukraine’?” Idol comes with significant praise from acclaimed author Marian Keyes who describes it as "fresh, glamorous, and surprising".

Often when we talk about cancel culture, people are talking about people who are very wealthy and in positions of power who’ve had to face consequences for their behaviour. And then actually, people who seem to face any sort of real repercussions tend to be people from maybe more marginalised communities. I think the way in which we talk about that can feel a bit reductive. When influencers don’t come out immediately to decry a situation or promote something, they can be criticised for being ignorant. “You don’t know what they’re doing; you don’t know what charities they’re donating to in their personal time,” points out O’Neill. Fresh, glamorous, and suprising. Dazzles us before revealling the darkness at its heart." - Marian Keyes In a visceral first-person voice, this harrowing novel shows how a human being becomes objectified: she no longer feels like Emma but “a thing to be used”. Louise O’Neill conveys Emma’s self-estrangement compellingly: “My body doesn’t belong to me any more … I want to erase it.”This novel is a true examination of what it means to be a celebrity, and how we put them upon a pedestal. It is also an examination of sexual abuse, and especially how people construct narratives for their entire life. So, in this instance, which narrative is true? Samantha is a guru/influencer/idol, however you would describe her. She has a following of millions of her "girls" on social media and encourages them to speak their truth. But she says she comes to the influencer part of Miller’s story with a certain degree of sympathy. “Because I do think it seems like a really difficult job.”

I think it’s really important for people to know the full recovery is possible. Because for years I thought that like I would only be 80 per cent recovered or 90 per cent recovered. But I felt it was very manageable. I was like, ‘oh, this is fine, I can manage this’. But then when something happens that throws you off balance…” Miller is absolutely obsessed with her past and her relationship with her best friend Lisa and ex-boyfriend. It's intriguing but equally terrifying to see a grown woman completely infatuated with past events to the point where she is willing to risk everything to try to return to that time. Everyone else has managed to move on but not Samantha. She has everything she could ever want- money, fame, a huge following of young women who are obsessed with her every word- but she can't let go of the past. Miller's life is a car crash in slow motion- the reader will be gripped to see what happens next. I couldn't help but think of the movie Single White Female when I read about Miller's actions! She mentions the case of Molly-Mae Hague, who was heavily criticised in January for comments she made about wealth and privilege (her point that everyone has the same 24 hours a day was deemed to be tone deaf). “She seems like an incredible businesswoman and she seems like a lovely woman. I don’t know her, but she’s not someone that I would go to for incisive commentary on the class issue in Britain, and so it’s expecting this from these people seems… that’s ridiculous,” says O’Neill. There were lots of satisfying moments in this book but the ending was the cherry on the cake, and I feel like I let out a sigh of relief when everything came crashing down once again. For her that something was the year 2016 and the aftermath of Asking For It, her novel that shone a spotlight on sexual violence and sexual consent pre-MeToo.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.' I'm not even sure where to begin with my review. I guess I'll start with that I couldn't put this book down. At times, I wasn't even sure what I was reading; I only knew that I had to find out where this story was going and how it would resolve. Idol takes on a LOT of fascinating themes without ever becoming weighed down by them. Brutal, compulsive, brilliant. Louise O'Neill exposes the contradictions and quandaries of influencer culture with her usual perceptiveness." - Abigail Dean I think this is what makes Idol work so well for me: O’Neill spends time exploring the different angles of what it means to be a flawed social media influencer, encompassing the perspectives of Sam herself, her manager, this antagonist, Lisa, her mother, etc. There is a compelling scene later in the book where Sam is meeting with Shakti’s board of directors, mostly old, white guys. One of them is adorably “woke” because of his younger daughter’s influence. They are discussing how Sam can distance herself from Shakti, given the allegations against her, so Shakti can go public. Sam, of course, balks at the idea of stepping away from her baby when men who have similarly been accused of sexual assault haven’t fallen from grace.

Anyone who has read Louise O’Neill’s previous work will be aware her ability to combine psychological complexity with a compulsively readable plot, and her new novel Idol is her best book yet. Idol is told, in the third person, from Samantha’s point of view, an approach that allows O’Neill to create one of the most effective and complex unreliable protagonists I’ve ever encountered in fiction. Throughout the novel, the charismatic Samantha manages to hold the reader’s sympathy – until the moments when she suddenly doesn’t.That said, she understands that people might be on a learning journey about where they might be avoiding interrogating their own privilege, or interrogating the baked-in thoughts they have about certain communities or cohorts – or even themselves. “None of us exist in a vacuum. We’ve been brought up in this society and a lot of these kind of things are internalised from a very young age.” The first couple of interviews that I read, I felt really strange afterwards. It made me feel like I was eavesdropping on someone else’s thinking about you and hearing someone else’s opinion of you.” Then, during the pandemic, O’Neill noticed that some of the wellness and New Age spiritualities groups she was drawn to online were starting to espouse some dodgy opinions, even skewing in a way that was right wing. She read about the term “conspirituality”, where conspiracy theories and spirituality intersected. That made her think about the sort of gurus who thrive in those spaces, and what they promise their fans.