Lucky

Oct 15, 2010 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is what I remember.

This is the first line in Lucky, Alice Sebold's memoir of her rape and its aftermath. It's the kind of first line that hooks you as you stand in the aisle of Barnes & Noble, or as you browse the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon. It's the kind of line that demands you read further. In five words, swollen with portentousness, it makes a lot of promises. An author needs to have a certain amount of guts to start a book like that. Alice Sebold has them and more. All the wo...more

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Jun 11, 2008 Kim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: for-realz, rubbernecking

When I first started reading ‘Lucky’ I thought that something was wrong with me. I mean, I get that there is this horrific rape within the first chapter and that NO ONE should have to go through what she went through, but I wasn’t feeling it. It was more like ‘oh, wow, that sucks’. Then, I started feeling worse because I thought of my soul has become a blackened prune pit residing near my left kidney. I was more into the fact that Tess Gallagher and Tobias Wolff were Alices’ professors than that...more When I first started reading ‘Lucky’ I thought that something was wrong with me. I mean, I get that there is this horrific rape within the first chapter and that NO ONE should have to go through what she went through, but I wasn’t feeling it. It was more like ‘oh, wow, that sucks’. Then, I started feeling worse because I thought of my soul has become a blackened prune pit residing near my left kidney. I was more into the fact that Tess Gallagher and Tobias Wolff were Alices’ professors than that poor Alice had to live through all this.

Then, thanks to the good people on GoodReads I learned that there is a syndrome.

Compassion Fatigue; A combination of being overwhelmed by the sheer number and scope of human disasters and atrocities, and numbed by the decontextualized manner in which they are presented by the media (thanks Abigail!)

This in no way undermines the meat of the story, I'm just explaining my utter horror of discovering that I wasn't truly freaking out during this book.

You can tell me something straight out and I’ll be blasé about it, but once you start to hint at an issue, I’m all over it. I think that as the book went on, it wasn’t so much a direct ‘I was raped’ story but more of a day to day life after with all the idiosyncrasies and patterns that emerge that drew me in.

It reminds me a bit of Joan Didion’s ‘Year of Magical Thinking’. That same sort of despondency that you find when you know that there is no option but to just move on.

So, there was a peak and then a valley and then a peak and then a valley and so on.. I would find myself not being able to put the book down during the time between the rape and the trial, watching Alice justify her actions and her drinking and not even commenting on the fact that it was an escape mechanism. But, following the trial, I was in that sort of valley stage, which, I suppose, is how life goes and it took me a bit longer to get through that.

The ‘Aftermath’ section was strong, except at that point I think her use of choppy, six word sentences seem out of place. This is the stuff that should flourish, the drug use, the denial, the recovery.

I appreciate her direct approach and lack of drama though. I won’t even pretend to understand what she went through and to write a memoir about it is extremely brave.

(less)

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Jun 28, 2007 stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: good-more-than-once, non-fiction, would-rec, crazypeoplememoirs, memoirs

i read this before i read Lovely Bones, in part because i wanted to see how she dealt with her own history, in part because well, i'm a sucker for memoirs. i classify this as a crazypeoplememoir not lightly - my definition of "crazy" is a little loose.

alice sebold was raped by someone she didn't know as an undergraduate at syracuse university.

what i love about this book is that sebold doesn't fall into the normal tradition of "victim" memoirs. she doesn't blame other people - even her attacke...more

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Jul 09, 2011 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Maybe you have to be a survivor to really appreciate this book. Maybe that is why I could not put this book down. Even though what happened to me was not violent, nor did I report it, I still went through many of the emotions, inner dialogue, and relationship changes and challenges Alice went through in the long aftermath, and I really enjoyed comparing the similarities and differences in our experiences. I felt myself choke up several times throughout this book because even when it seems she sh...more Maybe you have to be a survivor to really appreciate this book. Maybe that is why I could not put this book down. Even though what happened to me was not violent, nor did I report it, I still went through many of the emotions, inner dialogue, and relationship changes and challenges Alice went through in the long aftermath, and I really enjoyed comparing the similarities and differences in our experiences. I felt myself choke up several times throughout this book because even when it seems she should be doing well -- she won her case, made what seemed like true friends, was able to have healthy relationships -- we see how easily her life crumbled again. In the first several years after a rape, everything seems to come back to the rape and what it did to one's self-esteem and general philosophy. It changes everything you've come to expect from life ("It won't happen to me, smart girls don't get raped."). I went through a self-destructive phase as did Alice; I was with men who were degrading in not so obvious but nonetheless damaging ways, as was Alice. But there is life after rape, and that is the one thing I was left wanting from this book -- I wish she delved into how long it took her to not think about the rape on a daily basis anymore; when and how she met her husband; what she plans to reveal/conceal to her children (if she has any).

It's hard to know how someone who has not been through the R-word would take a book like this, thinking it is too exhibitionistic or histrionic, perhaps a cry for attention or a way to say "This is why I'm worthy of a memoir and your personal tragedies are not." I'm not sure how well this book would educate non-victims either since it is so personal, rather than a rape-crisis-center-type pamphlet ("what to say/not to say to a victim"). But Sebold does depict the range of reactions, and sometimes I find her responses to the "bad reactors" a little curt, like she was built more for emotional survival than I was -- or maybe it is the other way around?

In any case, as a survivor, and having also read 'The Lovely Bones' and enjoying Sebold's style, this was a great read for me. (One more thing: I might not recommend it for people still in the 'victim' stage, too real and raw and who knows what dangerous emotions and crazy thought processes it might provoke, as similar literature did to me in my early stages of recovery). (less)

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Jul 10, 2012 Xenia0201 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Brilliant. I was hooked from the first paragraph of the foreword but I had a very difficult time getting though the first chapter, where Sebold's rape was described in excrutiating detail. Remembering this is a memoir, it made me physically ill. I really admire the guts this woman has...she went right back to Syracuse and went on with her life, determined to get justice for what happened and reclaim her identity to be more than "that girl who was raped". I was appalled at the treatment she recei...more

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Apr 19, 2012 M rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more 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. (less)

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Sep 09, 2007 Emily rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: No one

Sebold, you self-righteous narrator, you. It's been four years since I've read this book, and your holier-than-thou survivor's mentality still infuriates me.

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Sean of the Dead ouch!
Jan 01, 2013 09:34am

Lori Having just finished this book, I agree thoroughly with those who say it was Lila who cut off the friendship. What I got out of Alice's writing about...more Having just finished this book, I agree thoroughly with those who say it was Lila who cut off the friendship. What I got out of Alice's writing about Lila's rape, however, was not that she aggressively pressed Lila to report and prosecute, nor that Lila was utterly unwilling to do so in the early hours - but that the reaction of the police, family and friends was not centered on Lila, and that threw a huge monkey wrench into their relationship. Sebold writes of the police chatting HER up while Lila was being questioned and processed; of HER assailant's picture as well as one of his friends' being in the mug-shot book Lila had to look at; of people treating her like "the pro" on how to deal with the aftermath of a rape instead of focusing on Lila. They made Lila's rape "All about Alice," and I have to think that would have been extremely alienating to Lila - but Sebold herself seems to intuit that, and not want the attention. She writes of feeling that Lila's family judged her as contagious, as somehow bringing this on Lila. I get the impression she still feels that one of her own assailant's buddies may have committed the assault on Lila as payback for taking her assailant to trial and getting a conviction - if not, why would the police use the mug shot of a man in jail? And she portrays Lila as more dependent on her family, more willing to go along and do what she's told, so the family's hostility to Alice (particularly the father, who tells Alice "we take care of our own. We don't need you") could certainly have played a large factor in the friendship's demise - and in Lila's decision not to follow through on the legal process.

To me, all of this corroborates Alice's persistent feeling that the aftermath of her own rape will never end - it always will color people's perception of her, always will be a burden not just on her but on all those around her - and she DOESN'T want to pose that burden to others. So to Emily I would simply say that you don't have to like Sebold, or her family and the worldview under whose influence she grew up, in order to acknowledge that she survived it in the best way she knew how - and that as a non-counselor she perhaps did not possess the skill to help Lila, but she did have caring and helpful intentions that were thwarted by her own local notoriety. I can only hope that both Alice and Lila have found some peace in their lives and are truly survivors and not victims any longer - that they are not just going through the motions, saying the right things, "acting normal", or locking down their consciousness whenever anything ugly threatens to bubble to the surface. PTSD is a bitch, and just recognizing its existence, just seeing a therapist for it and learning how it works, doesn't mean it has been conquered.(less)
Feb 22, 2013 04:38pm

Jun 16, 2008 Catsalive rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A harrowing tale, indeed. "It is not just forcible intercourse; rape means to inhabit and destroy everything" (p.123). No wonder it had taken so long for Alice to come to terms with it. Such brutal destruction of everything one knew and was could not be overcome quickly or easily. I found I had to stop reading at intervals to recover my own equanimity.

The reactions of the people surrounding her I found fascinating. What does one say to the victim? Certainly not "I guess this will make you less i...more A harrowing tale, indeed. "It is not just forcible intercourse; rape means to inhabit and destroy everything" (p.123). No wonder it had taken so long for Alice to come to terms with it. Such brutal destruction of everything one knew and was could not be overcome quickly or easily. I found I had to stop reading at intervals to recover my own equanimity.

The reactions of the people surrounding her I found fascinating. What does one say to the victim? Certainly not "I guess this will make you less inhibited about sex now, huh?" (p.77). You'd think a therapist could have done better than that.

I think I'd like to read The Lovely Bones again having read this memoir. I didn't give it much of a review or rating when I read it & I wonder if I would feel any different on a second reading. Terry Gross asks an interesting question at the end of Lucky:

TG: I got the impression that the kind of moment-by-moment description of the brutality that's in your memoir is something you felt didn't belong in this new novel, in the description of the brutality that this fourteen-year-old face.

AS: Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is that I did write the beginning of The Lovely Bones before I wrote my memoir, so the violent crime that occurs in Susie's life happened, in terms of writing about it, before a description of my own rape was written by me later. I think in order to separate the two stories, to make sure that Susie was not doing any of my work for me when I returned to the novel, I stopped to write Lucky. And one of the things that was very important for me to do was to get all the facts of my own case down, so they had been written, they existed whole in a whole other book, and I could go back to Susie and she could lead me where she wanted to take me and tell me her story in the way she wanted to tell it, as opposed to me feeling perhaps that I needed to really tell the real deal about every dtail of rape and violence. I did that in the memoir as opposed to the novel because I wanted my characters to rule the novel, not some sort of desire to talk about rape and reveal rape to readers.

I thought this memoir was well-written and gripping, and despite the distressing content it was worth the effort.(less)

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Sep 04, 2007 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who likes memoir

I picked this book up when I was living in Ireland, actually. I read the first five pages just standing in the bookstore and I was hooked. Unfortunately, I didn't have the money to buy it at the moment, so I put it on my mental "to-read" list. Just before I left for camp for the summer, I found it at my boyfriend's parents' house and started it again.

This book is very realistic in the fact that it has no happy ending; it isn't really a beginning, middle and end sort of story. It follows the life...more

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May 10, 2007 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs

It wouldn’t do justice to Lucky to call it a “rape memoir.” Though the events of the book cycle around Sebold’s rape she experienced as a college freshman, in a broader context her story deals with social attitudes and crime/justice. It takes a gifted writer to make brutal events into captivating memoirs; in stories that deal with a single trauma, first-person accounts tend to be so caught up feelings of aggression or grief that the emotions take precedence over the writing itself. Since Sebold...more

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Jan 28, 2008 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a grad student at Syracuse, this book definitely hits close to home. For this reason, I forbid my girlfriend to go to Marshall Street alone late at night (yeah, I am a chauvinistic knuckle-dragger). I feel that The Lovely Bones is really just a metaphor for this, the author's real experience with her rape as a college freshman at SU. I love the recognition and legitimacy of hatred in the author's recovery. "I want to fuck you with a knife," she writes of her rapist. Studies have shown where d...more

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Oct 24, 2007 Adrienne rated it 2 of 5 stars

Women's stories of their trauma aren't being told, their being sold. Here's a shining example.

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Sep 23, 2012 Maria Ella rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-stories, something-weird, 2012-reading-challenge

UGH. nothing to say much. Sorry, Alice.

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Mar 10, 2009 Laurie rated it 2 of 5 stars

It was interesting reading this true story after "The Lovely Bones" (this was her first published book) as now I see where her obsession with interlacing violence with the mundane world comes from. This was an interesting read but felt more like a recitation of fact, of the drill you go through as a rape victim, rather than an exploration of her mutilated sexuality, as she suggests. I didn't feel the terror, the anguish, the paranoia but instead felt as if I were in fact at the police station go...more

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Nov 26, 2011 Tânia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, non-fiction

The first line of the book: “This is what I remember…”

The last line (implied): “This is what I’ll never forget…”

“The Lovely Bones” was how I first heard of Alice Sebold, first the movie, and then the book. Unfortunately I wasn’t as much fascinated by the book as I was with the movie, which I think captured the real essence of what was supposed to be the book. “Lucky”, a true account of the brutal assault and rape of Alice Sebold, was the precedent to “The Lovely Bones”, her first novel. I was im...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

finished Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky last night, and I really loved it as a piece of writing (of course, since it’s about rape, the story is trying and difficult - but important and valid - something that needed to be said). I find Sebold’s spare style to be perfect for this work. She lays out the events and their aftermath with straightforward gumption, get it out there and get it out there truthfully. She’s strong in her experience, and that makes for good reading to me.

But one of the things,...more finished Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky last night, and I really loved it as a piece of writing (of course, since it’s about rape, the story is trying and difficult - but important and valid - something that needed to be said). I find Sebold’s spare style to be perfect for this work. She lays out the events and their aftermath with straightforward gumption, get it out there and get it out there truthfully. She’s strong in her experience, and that makes for good reading to me.

But one of the things, oddly enough, that I glommed onto in this book were all the writers she knew. I was telling friends last night that I had been born about twenty years too late and had gone to the wrong school since I am a writer. I should have been at Syracuse in the 80s with Sebold, although the ramifications of that in terms of what happened there during her years are not lost on me. But if you think only of the writers she met (and yes, I know this is impossible and probably somewhat awful for me to note but it’s true), wow!! Tobias Wolff, Tess Gallagher, Raymond Carver, Hayden Carruth, Jack Gilbert, Robert Bly - oh my word! What a line-up!!

In fact, it’s what Tobias Wolff says to her that most struck me because of its importance both in the book, in Sebold’s life - it seems, and in my world as a writer. Just after she sees her rapist for the first time after the rape, she has to tell Wolff that she won’t be in his workshop (sidenote - how amazing that some teachers can still command that much respect for their courses that a student, in the midst of major trauma, would still feel the need to explain her absence). She explains the situation, and this is the rest of the scene:

“Alice,” he said,” a lot of things are going to happen and this may not make much sense to you right now, but listen. Try, if you can, to remember everything.”
I have to restrain myself from capitalizing the last two words. He meant them to be capitalized. He meant them to resound and to meet me sometime in the future on whatever place I chose. He had known me for two weeks. I was nineteen. I sat in his class and drew flowers on my jeans. I had written a story about sewing dummies that came to life and sought revenge on dressmakers.
So it was a shout across a great distance. He knew, as I was later to discover when I walked into Doubleday on Fifth Avenue in New York and bought This Boy’s Life, Wolff’s own story, that memory could save, that it had power, that it was often the only resource of the powerless, the oppressed, or the brutalized.

In this line is the reason I write - not because I’m entirely powerless or greatly oppressed or have been brutalized (praise God for my blessings there) - but because a writer’s job is to find power for those who don’t have it - ourselves or others. And for me, a nonfiction writer, that tool for power is memory. (less)

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Aug 03, 2007 amanda marie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 50booksin07

It was definitely 50/50 with this book. One half of me really enjoyed it, while the other half of me was bored.

From the very beginning, I was impressed with Sebold and the actions she chose to take regarding her rape: dealing with everyone’s mixed emotions, going back to school where she was the topic of every conversation, and running into her rapist, charging him, and taking him to court. She was strong. Stronger than I think I would even be in such a position. Reading her graphic words regard...more

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Jul 15, 2010 Laurel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-2010

I never planned to read this book. I'd read Lovely Bones and wasn't that impressed with the writing; to read about Sebold's actual rape seemed not only voyeuristic to me, but too intensely personal a subject. Since then, I've read significantly more memoirs and gained a new appreciation for them and for the authors who write them and share their stories. I've learned from them.

A coworker whose opinion I trust encouraged me to give Lucky a try and when I was having difficulty getting past the rap...more

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Oct 24, 2007 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Aside from the actual events of this book, what I took from it was a better sense of how unique we all are as individuals. How we all "deal" with things differently. I also find it very interesting that most of us don't know how to cope or help someone who has been victimized. All of us are touched by violence in some form. We all know someone, or have been the victim ourselves, and yet we can't seem to figure out how to handle the situations. Maybe, even when violence is staring us in the face,...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This memoir is almost a really good book. But I think it's lacking the essential emotional connection between the author and readers. And the ending seems empty. Bravo for her, though, for writing about such a tough subject -- her rape and it's aftermath on her life.

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Oct 10, 2007 Katie Garcia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Why do all rape books end in the character loosing weight and subsequently shedding all the baggage of her rape. Is weight loss synonomous with healing? I liked the book, I thought the character had an interesting take on her own rape, but I felt she was also a littel judge-y and the whole I'm feeling better because I bought an excersise bike. When her best friend in college was raped a year later, she seemed to judge her friend for not prosecuting, for just wanting to forget it all happened. We...more

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Sarah Snipes LUCKY WAS A MEMOIR...LOL
Jun 29, 2009 10:10pm

Wagatwe "Why do all rape books end in the character loosing weight and subsequently shedding all the baggage of her rape. Is weight loss synonomous with heali...more
Jan 02, 2011 05:07pm

Danielle I found that she was quasi-obsessed with being a virgin and what that meant in regards to her rape; she just put a lot of emphasis on it. (What about...more I found that she was quasi-obsessed with being a virgin and what that meant in regards to her rape; she just put a lot of emphasis on it. (What about women who aren't virgins at the time of their rape? Are they somehow less credible? Less brutalized? Less a victim?) She did mention how she was rather conservative in dress and manner up to that point, so I think that the issue of restraint towards sex was a large issue for her before she was attacked. To each their own - each one of us has to approach sex in a way that makes sense for us as individuals. It just seems that she had the attitude of sex = bad, therefore girls who have sex = bad, long before her rape.
This mentality isn't exactly healthy, especially when combined with the traumas of rape. A lot of people equate rape with sex, when really it is an assault that uses sexual acts. When you have the attitude that sex = bad = bad girl combined with rape = sex, you end up with raped girl = bad person. This is a trap that a lot of people fall into, and one that I think that Sebold struggled with a lot, hence her tunnel vision on virginity - her one way to insist to herself and everyone else with the rape = sex mentality that she wasn't *really* bad. (Of course she's not, and it was never her fault.)
The only way out of this spin cycle of insanity is to realize that rape is not sex, it is assault; that consensual sex is not bad; and that a woman who participates in sex is not a bad person.
Sebold insisting on hanging out with female virgins (and mostly only virgins; if she spent time with a sexually active woman she expressed discomfort) after her rape was kind of creepy. It seemed as though she felt that only they could really understand the concept of innocence and the concept of that innocence being taken away. Everyone will cope with a trauma in their own way, I just can't help feeling that for a rape victim who was looking for some understanding and for people to look at her as a person instead of someone who's been damaged, she seemed to have a skewed and judgmental view of women who were sexually active.(less)
updated May 23, 2012 01:34pm

Nov 30, 2007 Gabby rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: inspirational

It took me awhile to read this book, mostly because I had so little time, but I loved it. It was like reading my own story. I was so proud of how she stood up to her attacker, and always wished I could have. The time period was exactly the same, so it was eerily the same in a lot of ways. I also grew up in Syracuse, so I knew all the locations quite well and felt her story even more, if that's possible. You have a life before and a life after, and it's never the same again, no matter how hard yo...more

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Mar 11, 2009 Timesha added it · review of another edition

The book that I just finished reading was Lucky by Alice Sebold. This book's genre is A memoir. I guess that I would have to say that the theme would have to be there is evil lerking around everywhere you go.
Lucky is about Alice Sebold and her life after she had been raped in a tunnel. She was so sure everyone was judging her afterwards. Also that no guy would look at her the sameway afterwards, she'd always be that raped ugly girl. Then she went into trial with the rapist and she was seeked j...more The book that I just finished reading was Lucky by Alice Sebold. This book's genre is A memoir. I guess that I would have to say that the theme would have to be there is evil lerking around everywhere you go.
Lucky is about Alice Sebold and her life after she had been raped in a tunnel. She was so sure everyone was judging her afterwards. Also that no guy would look at her the sameway afterwards, she'd always be that raped ugly girl. Then she went into trial with the rapist and she was seeked justic. Alice is obviously the main character, the on to get raped, the victum.
When I started this book I was really shocked but at the same time really pulled in and interested, mainly because she had been raped. My favorite scene was the rape because of the intensity and aggressiveness of the fight that she put up. My favorite character was Alice because she showed a lot of strength by moving right on in life and put the whole thing behind her. This book was very descriptive for example when Alica and the rapist had been in the tunnel the gave detail of everu little bump and bang never leaving one point out. A question that I had that had gotten answered was "would Alice ever find her rapist and learn his true identity?" and she did. I agreed with Alice for moving on because living with something like that on your mind can really mess you up emotionally and make you sad or filled with many emotion. The line that Alice uses "It semmed unfathomable to me that it had taken so many years to come to terms with my rape...but I had began to except that it had. It left me with a feeling I couldn't describe. Hell was over. I had all the time in the world ahead." In this last line it has tought me that Alice Sebold was a really wise women to let something so tradgic go and be put in the past.
I belive that any woman in the world would enjoy reading this book. But I would recommend this book to teenaged girls. If you liked the movie "Women thou art loosed" You may like Lucky because they both involve rape and sadness but in the end there is forgiveness.
In conclusion I have rapped up telling you about the book Lucky by Alice Sebold. About the sadness and greatness about it. The good and the bad. The interesting and educational. That this was a really good book.
-- (less)

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Jan 02, 2009 Antof9 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2005-read, women, upsetting, made-me-cry

WOW. This is not what I had expected. I think I had been told (or maybe assumed) that this was another novel, more heavy and more autobiographical than The Lovely Bones, but I didn't know it was a full-on straight-talk version of her actual story.

My thoughts? They are many and random:

It's heavy. Really heavy. And because this forum thread was active the week before I read this book, I'd say, strongly, don't let an 11 year old read this book!
This book reminded me a LOT of Fran Drescher's Cance ...more WOW. This is not what I had expected. I think I had been told (or maybe assumed) that this was another novel, more heavy and more autobiographical than The Lovely Bones, but I didn't know it was a full-on straight-talk version of her actual story.

My thoughts? They are many and random:

It's heavy. Really heavy. And because this forum thread was active the week before I read this book, I'd say, strongly, don't let an 11 year old read this book!
This book reminded me a LOT of Fran Drescher's Cancer Schmancer. I hope that's not insulting or inappropriate to either author, but it seemed as if both stories needed to be told, and told well, as an empowering story for other women (and men) to read. Yes, they are totally different. And they are totally the same.
I'm interested by the comments that describe this in "uplifting" words. I agree it's "exhilarating" (Elle), "strangely enchanting" (Newsday), and "funnier than you'd think was possible" (Vogue), but it wasn't totally positive. It's definitely one woman's story of survival. How she was incredibly destructive and came out on the other side, how she discovered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc. But I still found it to be sort of a downer. Not because of the subject matter. The rape was overcome! That's an upper! But because she spent so long on the first three-quarters of the book and then after the 2nd rape (not a spoiler, per se) where her life went was sooooo depressing. In the end, her "healing" was only granted a handful of pages. And that's the best part! Why wouldn't she have dwelt more on that? That's what I found depressing.
It is amazingly well written. And now that I know Lovely Bones was her first book, I can forgive her the dumb "quasi-Ghost" scene.
Having only read these two books, I can't help but wonder if this is the only topic she writes on.
As you read this book, you wonder how her family feels about it. At least, I did.
I'll end with this Newsday quote from the cover. I think it's spot-on: The quiet achievement of Sebold's memoir of her rape as a college freshman is that she handles her subject with the integrity of a journalist and the care of a survivor.(less)

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Jan 02, 2009 Katherine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When Alice Sebold was brutally beaten and raped in the cold and lonely park near her college dormitory, police told her that she was “lucky” to have not been murdered. “In the tunnel where I was raped…a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky.” The pain and irony in this description serves as the basis for Sebold’s memoir entitled Lucky.
From that night on, Sebold struggles to keep her life together. She doesn’t want to...more When Alice Sebold was brutally beaten and raped in the cold and lonely park near her college dormitory, police told her that she was “lucky” to have not been murdered. “In the tunnel where I was raped…a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky.” The pain and irony in this description serves as the basis for Sebold’s memoir entitled Lucky.
From that night on, Sebold struggles to keep her life together. She doesn’t want to be looked upon by others as tainted or destroyed; nor does she try to pretend that the rape never occurred. Rather, Sebold bravely marches ahead with her life, continuing on with school, while at the same time attempting to deal with the incredible trauma that the rape inflicted upon her.
Sebold’s story is rich with details and vivid descriptions. She effortlessly weaves together raw and painful details with sarcasm, revealing a raped teenaged woman’s forced bravado as she explores the complicated dynamic between herself and her parents and sister after the rape. Desperate for her parents to not treat her differently after the rape, she tries to show her father that she’s not broken. “I’m still me, Dad,” Sebold tells her father.
As Sebold’s college years draw to a close, she realizes that she still has not healed from the rape. In the following years, Sebold moves from one precarious situation to the next, moving through lovers, drugs, and low-paying jobs until finally she realizes that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, a realization that finally helps her to deal with the trauma in her life.
This book is a remarkable piece. It is a gritty, unabashed, and honest look at the devastating effects of rape on not only the victim, but on her friends and family as well. Sebold’s brave work is not an ongoing psychotherapy session. Rather, it is the product of years of reflection and recognition, a beautiful piece of writing that explores the journey of healing and empowerment.

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May 12, 2013 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

This memoir from the author of The Lovely Bones packs a huge emotional punch. I read this short memoir over the course of twenty-four hours and I came away from it feeling dazed, like I had been hit over the head by a sack of bricks.

Lucky tells the story of Alice Sebold's rape as a freshman in college, from the actual incident to the aftermath and the subsequent legal proceedings, and Sebold makes the reading experience almost as raw and brutal as the incident itself. The first chapter describes...more This memoir from the author of The Lovely Bones packs a huge emotional punch. I read this short memoir over the course of twenty-four hours and I came away from it feeling dazed, like I had been hit over the head by a sack of bricks.

Lucky tells the story of Alice Sebold's rape as a freshman in college, from the actual incident to the aftermath and the subsequent legal proceedings, and Sebold makes the reading experience almost as raw and brutal as the incident itself. The first chapter describes the rape in painful, minute detail from the very first page. There is no let-up for the reader. We are taken directly into the midst of her physical and mental pain as she struggles with her rapist, who threatens to kill her if she doesn’t do what he says.

Even though the rape itself only consists of the first chapter, the tension and emotional turmoil never lets up, as Alice deals with the aftermath of her trauma. The police initially do not believe that she was a virgin (“I don’t see many virgins in this line of work,” one of the officers tells Alice as she gives her statement), and her classmates in college treat her as both a pariah and a gruesome celebrity. On top of this, Alice agrees to go ahead with the legal proceedings – something she’s told that many rape victims don’t do.

To say that this is a fast read is probably the understatement of the year, and while the author includes less-intense passages about her childhood and her family, these are hardly a respite from the main gut-wrenching narrative. Passages even appear to be taken verbatim from actual police and court documents…try reading the chapter when Alice takes the stand to testify against her rapist and see if you’re able to keep your emotions in check.

The candor that Alice brings to her story is both refreshing and heartbreaking. This is a powerful book and well worth a read for anyone willing to try it.

Graphic language & subject matter.

Recommended for: readers who appreciate trauma-memoirs and/or straightforward, candid writing. It’s good to point out that some readers have zero tolerance for memoirs, so keep this in mind if suggesting this book to someone else.

Readalikes: Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso. Another well-written, candid memoir about a traumatic hot-button issue – in this case, pedophilia. The author describes her emotional and controversial relationship with Peter, a charming fifty-year old man whom she met when she was eight years old. From then on, the two of them carried out a manipulative and sexual relationship until Margaux reached her twenties. Intertwined with this is the story of Margaux’s repressive and abusive father, as well as her mother’s struggle with mental illness.

Smashed: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas. This poetic and candid memoir takes the reader on a journey through the beginning stages of alcohol consumption to full-blown abuse. In addition to chronicling her experiences with alcohol, Koren also details how her relationships suffered because of her addiction.(less)

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Apr 30, 2013 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

This memoir from the author of The Lovely Bones packs a huge emotional punch. I read this short memoir over the course of twenty-four hours and I came away from it feeling dazed, like I had been hit over the head by a sack of bricks.

Lucky tells the story of Alice Sebold's rape as a freshman in college, from the actual incident to the aftermath and the subsequent legal proceedings, and Sebold makes the reading experience almost as raw and brutal as the incident itself. The first chapter describes...more This memoir from the author of The Lovely Bones packs a huge emotional punch. I read this short memoir over the course of twenty-four hours and I came away from it feeling dazed, like I had been hit over the head by a sack of bricks.

Lucky tells the story of Alice Sebold's rape as a freshman in college, from the actual incident to the aftermath and the subsequent legal proceedings, and Sebold makes the reading experience almost as raw and brutal as the incident itself. The first chapter describes the rape in painful, minute detail from the very first page. There is no let-up for the reader. We are taken directly into the midst of her physical and mental pain as she struggles with her rapist, who threatens to kill her if she doesn’t do what he says.

Even though the rape itself only consists of the first chapter, the tension and emotional turmoil never lets up, as Alice deals with the aftermath of her trauma. The police initially do not believe that she was a virgin (“I don’t see many virgins in this line of work,” one of the officers tells Alice as she gives her statement), and her classmates in college treat her as both a pariah and a gruesome celebrity. On top of this, Alice agrees to go ahead with the legal proceedings – something she’s told that many rape victims don’t do.

To say that this is a fast read is probably the understatement of the year, and while the author includes less-intense passages about her childhood and her family, these are hardly a respite from the main gut-wrenching narrative. Passages even appear to be taken verbatim from actual police and court documents…try reading the chapter when Alice takes the stand to testify against her rapist and see if you’re able to keep your emotions in check.

The candor that Alice brings to her story is both refreshing and heartbreaking. This is a powerful book and well worth a read for anyone willing to try it.

Graphic language & subject matter.

Recommended for: readers who appreciate trauma-memoirs and/or straightforward, candid writing. It’s good to point out that some readers have zero tolerance for memoirs, so keep this in mind if suggesting this book to someone else.

Readalikes: Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso. Another well-written, candid memoir about a traumatic hot-button issue – in this case, pedophilia. The author describes her emotional and controversial relationship with Peter, a charming fifty-year old man whom she met when she was eight years old. From then on, the two of them carried out a manipulative and sexual relationship until Margaux reached her twenties. Intertwined with this is the story of Margaux’s repressive and abusive father, as well as her mother’s struggle with mental illness.

Smashed: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas. This poetic and candid memoir takes the reader on a journey through the beginning stages of alcohol consumption to full-blown abuse. In addition to chronicling her experiences with alcohol, Koren also details how her relationships suffered because of her addiction.
(less)

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Apr 08, 2013 Shay Carolan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My rating for the memoir Lucky by Alice Sebold is a 4 out of 5 stars.

In this memoir Alice explains what she must do after being brutally beaten and raped. She goes through a series of events that lead up to the most important: she must face her rapist. She tells what life is like after a horrible event like this happens.

The strength of this piece is that even though Alice had been through so many horrible things, she was still considered lucky. She still had her life unlike the girl that was mu...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Kiersi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I hated this book. I feel like people gave her 3+ stars because she was telling her rape story and pity party story. She never really focused on how she made a happy recovery and how she moved on. This book is very violent and hateful. I understand rape is the most evil but I feel like she was too self righteous. I feel like she gave too much information and therefore sold away her rights to privacy of feelings. She may look back and regret what she wrote and feel differently about everything. A...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Jenna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memior

Alice is walking home through a park and someone boy/man grabs her and takes her to a dark place, where she doesn’t know exactly where she is until they stop and the man starts to tell her to take she cloths off. After everything had happened in the park Alice had been walking back to where she was going, as she was going she stopped at a friends house and went to the police station where she was going to be trying to get this man put in jail. She gets the “rapist” put in jail and he gets out, t...more Alice is walking home through a park and someone boy/man grabs her and takes her to a dark place, where she doesn’t know exactly where she is until they stop and the man starts to tell her to take she cloths off. After everything had happened in the park Alice had been walking back to where she was going, as she was going she stopped at a friends house and went to the police station where she was going to be trying to get this man put in jail. She gets the “rapist” put in jail and he gets out, that when life starting getting even more hectic for Alice and her friends and family.

What I believe is the most amazing thing in this book is how strong Alice is throughout this whole book Lucky. All the things that she had to go through in such little time and everyone around her asking questions about what’s going on? Are you going to be okay? Is he getting put in jail? For example, when Alice gets back from the police station, people are asked a whole bunch of questions about what happened. She just stands tall and doesn’t make it look like she is scared. She is standing there answering the people’s questions like it nothing to her. She would be my hero if I was around her when she just had this happen to her because I wouldn’t be able to do what she did just a couple hour after all of this happened.

Before you start reading this book you want to make sure that you are prepare for what’s is going to be happening. If you want to read this there is foul language. When the “rapist” coming he is using a lot of swear words and is very rough with the whole situation. This is also a book that has really happened to someone.

The kind of person that would want to read this book is if they like true stories, if they can handle rough behavior, and if they don't care if there is swear words. When you are reading this book it is like you are the person in the story and this is really happening to you. You can picture the things happened because it is in so much detail. If the reader can picture what Alice is going through then they might be able to get into the book more then someone else not knowing really what is going on with her and what would they do if this same thing would happen to them some day, maybe they wouldn't see it happening. (less)

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title link	preview: Lucky: A Memoir
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