Louise ONeills award-winning feminist sci-fi YA novel, Only Ever Yours, skewers the beauty myth with disturbing precision… Louise ONeills debut YA novel didnt so much speak to me as run at me screaming.

Consumed in a single sitting, I found its storytelling as magnetic as it was troubling.

Most disarming though, was its ability to mind-read.

Its an alarming novel, not least because its dystopian backdrop is incidental to its feminist warning.

It learned that a female body was an invader), are no longer born but manufactured.

The eves education eschews the three Rs in favour of teaching them that prettiness and thinness mean everything.

You could say theyre taught the three Cs: Conformity, Control and Competition.

Well, for a while at least.

Only Ever Yourswas published in the UK last summer and comes out in the US this week.

In the face of all that success though, its author cant seem to stop apologising.

ONeill says sorry several times during our talk.

She says sorry that I found the novel so disturbing to read.

She says sorry for the ending.

I feel really bad!

My next novel is about rape culture.

So its really cheerful again, as you could imagine!

Obviously, no-one reading it willactuallythink that…

Science aside, Im less certain.

Her novel offers a powerful warning, not least because so much of it rings true to life.

Every single thing that I wrote about in that book was inspired by a real-life event she says.

Because Im so active onTwitterIliveon the internetIm seeing all of these stories constantly.

It almost didnt end, in fact.

ONeills original draft was 50,000 words longer.

I think I could have used so many more examples, she says.

I didnt want it to just be like an issues novel.

Is it going to feel overwhelming?

Only Ever Yoursdoes feel overwhelming, but not in the way ONeill feared.

Its overwhelming to read such a gimlet-eyed takedown of ambient sexism.

Its interesting what different ages take from it.

A fifteen or sixteen year old will really identify with it.

The eleven year olds all talk to me about Darwin.

Im like, really?

To me, the love story is the least interesting thing in the book.

Its not even a love story.

The perspective of distance was key inOnly Ever Yours creation.

It almost stayed just an idea.

The idea, thankfully, proved a stubborn one.

When I came home to Ireland, I just couldnt stop thinking about it.

I was dreaming about it.

And I realised that no, my book is more about feminism.

The dystopian setting is more the backdrop.

The return to Ireland coincided with a change in lifestyle for ONeill.

There was something about taking that space that I actually started to go This is bullshit.

This is complete bullshit.

Because when youre in it, its a lot harder to distance yourself.

Youre just completely immersed in it, its very entrenched.

The fact thatVoguedidnt have a black model on its cover for twelve years how is that acceptable in 2015?

That homogenisation of beauty was something I looked at in the book.

Scenes like the above explain ONeills wariness when it comes to accepting film adaptation offers forOnly Ever Yours.

They might make aspects of it sexy that arent supposed to be.

In addition to a movie version, a sequel might also not be out of the question.

I wanted to point out that gender stereotypes impinge on men as well.

Getting too emotional is a really big part of that.

Cool girls cant cry.

I feel like no-ones allowed to cry at this stage, unless youre a baby!

People alienated from their bodies, taught to hate them and compete for unattainable perfection?

I do think that.

Whereas now I feel theres so much information, betweenRookieandxoJaneandJezebelandThe Vagendaand theEveryday SexismProject.

I think that, as you said, theres hope in that sense of community for feminists now.

Only Ever Yours is released in the US today, Tuesday the 12thof May, published by Quercus.