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Lucky

Alice Sebold

Why we're reading this: It is based on the author's personal account of her own rape and survival.…more
[close] It is based on the author's personal account of her own rape and survival.

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Jul 11, 2008 M rated it liked it

This was the last thing I ever intended to read, but Sebold's narrative really captured my attention. I was on Chapter 3 before I knew it, and just had to keep reading; I had to find out what happened. I actually got the rest of the book as an audiobook (got to Chapter 3 via online excerpts) and listened to Sebold herself narrate the story of how, when she was an 18 year old virgin coed at Syracuse University, she was brutalized, beaten, and viciously raped and sodomized one night on her way hom This was the last thing I ever intended to read, but Sebold's narrative really captured my attention. I was on Chapter 3 before I knew it, and just had to keep reading; I had to find out what happened. I actually got the rest of the book as an audiobook (got to Chapter 3 via online excerpts) and listened to Sebold herself narrate the story of how, when she was an 18 year old virgin coed at Syracuse University, she was brutalized, beaten, and viciously raped and sodomized one night on her way home. Not exactly the lightest of subjects, and told in very intimate detail to boot. But it is Sebold's wry and factual telling of her story that made me keep listening, even when it was difficult. This isn't a pity-me memoir, drenched in oversimplification and gratuitous tragedy. It is an important story that needs to be told, because as someone put it, a lot of people seem to still think that rape is just a form of bad sex. It was heartbreaking and disheartening to hear that even though Sebold had been through such a brutal ordeal, she was still getting asked questions by jurors like why she went through the park at night. Her own father asked her how she could have "allowed" the rape to happen, since her perpetrator wasn't holding the knife to her throat the entire time? I got so angry about how she was treated, this visibly beaten human being, who wasn't believed by the police officer who took her statement (he thought there was more to her story than what she was telling him, as in he thought she was at one point a willing participant--can you imagine???), and who had to be the calm one who held her family together (nobody wanted to be at the grand jury proceeding or the trial, though eventually her father deigned to go to the trial) because they just didn't know how to deal with what had happened at all. Neither, as you can imagine, did Sebold, who was able to identify her rapist and get him convicted and given the maximum sentence (25 years), but found that despite this form of closure, she was still haunted and traumatized by the events for 20 years, even as she attempted to convince herself emotions were bullshit and she was fine. I give Sebold credit for being frank and honest about the extent to which she deceived herself, about how she used alcohol and heroin and bad relationships to self-medicate, and I identify with her intellectual impatience with herself to be "over it". We know, though this book doesn't go into it, that Sebold eventually sought therapy, re-enrolled in school, met the love of her life (fellow novelist Glen David Gold) and wrote a bestselling first novel. After reading what happened to her at 18, I am left in awe of her strength and perseverance. ...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Maeve rated it it was amazing

I debated between 4 and 5. This was a powerful memoir. Having just read "The Better Angels of Our Nature" it was interesting to juxtapose a book centered around how an extremely violent act can disrupt everything. ...more

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