Lucky by Alice Sebold
Pages: 243
Published by Hachette Book Group
Publication Date September 16th 2002
Source: Free Little Library
Genres: Memoir
Goodreads
In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."
First Sentence
In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheatre, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered.
Review
Alice Sebold is a powerful writer. Be it fiction or memoir she has a way of drawing you in with words. Like The Lovely Bones, Lucky is difficult to read a times. This memoir is rawer than fiction. It makes your skin crawl with hurt and revulsion to what is happening.
It is strange to say I enjoyed reading a novel about rape but I did. Alice Sebold makes you feel a roller coaster of emotions and I found it hard to put Lucky down.
I had no idea Alice Sebold had a memoir like this out–it does indeed sound very intense. I’ll have to check it out, it sounds like a worthwhile read. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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