Customer Reviews

Lucky (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(199)
4 star:		(84)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

What happened to Alice Sebold shouldn't happen to anyone. That she survived her ordeal at all is miraculous, but that she found a voice with which to describe her experience with clarity, with tremendous insight and with warmth is almost unbelievable, yet this is exactly what she does with Lucky.

As a studen at Syracuse University in 1980, Alice is the victim of a horribly brutal rape as she leaves a friends house. The experience understandably shatters her, but even she does not realize the depth of her feelings or the effect they are having on her life and behavior. She eventually sees her rapist again, and takes us through the trial and subsequent events in her life, which are tied intricately to the rape even though she is unaware of it. The afterward picks up ten years after the book opens as she is still battling with the emotional scars that have not yet healed.

That anyone can talk about such horror at all is amazing, but Alice really allows readers inside her head, hiding nothing from them. Her painful interactions with her family and friends as they try to do what's best for her, and as she tries to convince them that she's 'recovered' come across as achingly real as they were for her. Readers, too, can see how damaged Alice still feels even as she tells herself that she's not, and I felt myself rooting for this heroic woman throughout the book, hoping that she would find whatever justice that she could and pick up the pieces of her life.

This is no maudlin tale, not at all romanticized or sugar coated, which may be difficult for some to take, as it was for me at times. But I kept reading because I was so amazed at what was being offered, that someone was sharing such a personal experience, something that affects more women than most people know. I am fortunate enough not to know someone who has endured a similar ordeal, although I now think I have some very limited insight into what a person might experience.

I applaud Alice Sebold for her bravery in putting forth her story, and I think this book is an important one. It's not an easy read nor one to be taken lightly, but I feel that I learned so much from it. And the fact that this book represents Alice's triumph makes it all the more rewarding.

Like her wonderful novel The Lovely Bones - which I've also reviewed and which you must read - Lucky is a harrowing, heart-wrenching book about the worst possible thing that can happen to a woman. Alice Sebold tells the raw story of her rape ordeal and her subsequent struggle for recovery with an honesty and warmth which is compelling. Lucky reads almost like a novel itself at times, with gripping moments of suspense, particularly during the court trial scenes.
Alice Sebold was the innocent victim of an unforgivable crime - but she doesn't ask for our sympathy or pity in these beautifully written pages. She earns our respect and admiration for the courageous way she tells how the traumatic events changed and shaped her life; how the naive college student would eventually become a hardened, determined aggressor herself in her brave fight for justice against her attacker. Sadly, this natural reaction to her personal violation came with a price - destructive behavioural damage that brought a later downward spiral into drugs. What the author didn't know at the time is that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; an anxiety syndrome that emerges following a psychologically distressing traumatic event such as rape, which she battles to overcome.
Can someone really, truly, get over something so savage and brutal as rape is the numbing thought you're left with long after you put the book aside? The past can never be forgotten, but Alice Sebold has managed to crawl from the wreckage and move on with her life to a happier future that has brought her international fame and acclaim. That says something about the human spirit - and everything about this remarkable woman.

I read this book strictly because I am a rape survivor. I was raped in June of 2003. My attack and rape were so similar to Seebold's that it was eerie. One aspect of rape therapy is to re-tell your own story; re-write it. However, when you are attacked so brutally and aren't 'supposed' to be alive, the re-telling is difficult. Events are lost in memory almost as quickly as they occur. The brain is too preoccupied with dying as painlessly as possible, while simultaneously looking for any escape (at least in my own case).
Because of the way that my brain functioned under such duress, I am finding this book to be a useful tool lately. As I re-read Seebold's account of her own rape, I am better able to remember. I can say, 'yes! exactly what happened!' or 'no, I did this instead.' I write in the margins. I do it for personal use, to better help in my own recovery. If you are a survivor, I would ask your counselor if she recommends this for you. It is helping me now. Hence, on that score, this book has been invaluable to me.

However, I must agree with previous reviewers regarding the rather selfish tone of the author. I also found her to be overly self-centered and amazingly insensitive to others around her. I did get the impression that she really believed that she was the only one that had been hurt and even if she wasn't, her pain was the only pain that mattered (not just to her, but in general.)

Yet, it is important to remember that this is a *memoir* and not fiction. Therefore, Ms. Seebold can only tell the story as it is. If there is not much written on recovery, well, perhaps this is because there hasn't been much experience in the way of recovery.

I would certainly not have picked this book up had I not shared a similar experience. I read it the first time (within a week afer my own rape) merely for company. To survive such an ordeal absolutely leaves you as a complete alien, walking in a daze in a world that you never expected to see again. Merely associating with people around you -- co-workers, neighbors, your grocery store cashiers, etc., leaves you lonely for company of someone who has been just where you are. Books like this one can fill this need initially.

To those who have survived such a rape and are interested in reading more, I must recommend the phenomenal book by Susan Brison called Aftermath.

There are not many writers who can be extremely talented fiction AND non-fiction writers. So even though I had read "The Lovely Bones" and knew Alice Sebold to be an extremely gifted storyteller, I hesitated to take up "Lucky". It was non-fiction and moreover, autobiographical, and moreover, documents a personal tragedy. With all due respect, and without diminishing the seriousness of the subject, I wasn't sure I would be able to stick with it to the end.

Well, I certainly did stick with it to the end; if you liked "The Lovely Bones" reading this will help you understand how she was able to bring haunting and heartbreaking life to the characters in that book. She tells her story brilliantly. I recommend this book without reservation.

Alice Sebold was raped during her freshman year in college. One can think of this as just a statistic because, undoubtedly, a great many eighteen year old girls are raped. But the author expertly describes how this event affected her. One might think this solitary event is (hopefully) followed by a singular period of recovery, albeit perhaps a very long period of recovery. I've learned from 'Lucky' that this simply isn't true. One's psyche/soul takes a windy, unpredictable path after experiencing such brutal trauma. Alice Sebold describes her path very clearly. Tough reading, but I think this is perhaps the best memoir of this sort I've ever read.

Bottom line: although the subject matter is likely to turn off prospective readers I suggest 'Lucky' be required reading by all.

Even before I write a commentary about Alice Sebold's book, I know that a mini-review like this could never do it justice. "Lucky" is an incredible book, written by an incredible author. What struck me most about Sebold's writing is her unadorned honesty. A previous reviewer stated that she found the characters to be cliche. I found the book and characters to be exactly the opposite. While reading "Lucky", I wondered to myself if I could be as open and honest as Sebold writes. Probably not, was my answer. "Lucky" is a book that is written with a clear and honest voice; a voice that stayed with me for weeks after reading the book. And there was humor. Humor which both surprised me--because it struck me that a book about rape shouldn't contain humor--then made perfect sense to me, because Alice Sebold is a human being and humor is one of the functions that human beings employ in dealing with pain.

This could have very easily have been a "poor me" book, and maybe some readers have the expectations that it should be more that type of book. One of the main reasons that I found "Lucky" to be as compelling as it is, is because of what it isn't. "Lucky" is not a book filled with self pity. I don't want to say that Sebold's book isn't emotional, because it most certainly is, but the emotions aren't worn on Alice Sebold's sleeves. She writes in a way in which a reader can understand some of the pain and trauma she has gone through (and I can only imagine, still deals with), but that emotion and pain does not get in the way of her being an excellent narrator. The narration in unnerving at times, because of how concise a writer Sebold is. She writes the story of her life and rape (as they are intertwined) in a very straight foward and matter-of-fact fashion. Maybe time and distance have allowed that type of narration to occur. But Sebold's straight fowardness has not resulted in a cold narration. "Lucky" is an incredible book written by a fragile human being; a human being who has bravely written what would have to be one of the most painful experiences ever to occur in anyone's life. In writing "Lucky", I feel that Alice Sebold has presented a gift to all of us. A gift of her pain, honesty, humor and fragility. I thank her for this gift.

Frankly, I liked (if that's a word that can be used about a book concerning the subject of personal rape) Lucky more than The Lovely Bones, her second book, the one that put her on the map. Perhaps `appreciated' would be a better word for my feelings about Lucky.
To bare oneself, to detail the experience of rape so unsparingly, to extend the memoir back to her childhood and forward to her downward spiral into heroin addiction and depression is to strip naked for your public. It takes guts, something Alice Sebold has in spades.
The book's title comes from a comment by a cop that she should consider herself "lucky" to have just been raped, as another young woman was murdered in the same spot just a short time earlier. Not feeling very "lucky," Sebold proceeds to show how this incident of brutality and violence changed the course of her life.
I have heard Alice Sebold speak on several occasions and greatly admire her candor, her honesty, and her insistence on calling rape by its true name. Bravo for this sere and scathing memoir by a remarkable woman and writer.

Alice Sebold's Lucky offers a stark window onto the strains and suffering of rape. Sebold's sharp prose, blunt honesty, and rather black sense of humor give the reader that rare feeling of stepping into an author's skin. Where others would shy away, she offers vivid, often horifying picture so that we can know the brutality she suffered. Most importantly, I did not get a sense she was rewriting the history of her attack and her reaction, but rather like she was opening up a journal of dark times.

Though at times a hard trip, readers will certainly grow from the experience of reading this work. I urge those interested to read it.

This is a very powerful book. The opening chapter describes the brutal rape of the author at the end of her freshman year at University. The subsequent chapters deal with feelings of guilt and anger and her struggle to relate to those closest to her, her mother father and sister and good friends. She also has difficulties with the police who are depicted as something less than sympathetic. On her return to University her spots the rapist on the street and turns him into the police where he is subsequently charged and convicted through the courageous tenacity of Alice.
The power in the telling of this true story lies in the uncompromising steely eyed look and description of the emotions surrounding Alice's rape. How does the victim react to those who love her but are incapable or at least unable to express support in a meaningful way? How do the prejudices and biases harboured by police, friends, family and psychiatrists fail to give the needed support? And not only that, they blame the victim.
Then when a close friend of Alice is raped and Alice is not able to comfort or support her does it become clear that there is little anyone can offer the victim except warm and caring love, and even that is not enough and as Alice says at the end of the fourth chapter "No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

In the final chapter "Aftermath" Alice describes her life during the next ten years and we see that the rape is not an incident in the past that one "gets over" but a defining moment that affects Alice and all rape victims in way that is permanent and like survivors of the Vietnam war is identified as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

As a man I wondered how would I respond to a rape victim. Is loving care the best we can do? It becomes evident that the only positive way is to work to prevent rapes. This is a book worth reading as difficult as that is. Alice Seabold has done a great service in telling her story. 4.5/5

The book Lucky, is a memoir about Alice Sebold. In the beginning, Alice describes a brutal rape in her freshman year of college. She went to her dorm room, told a friend and they went to the hospital. Alice underwent tests that would later help the police prosecute a criminal. She went home for the summer and returned back to school at Penn. State. She then ran into her Rapist on the street and called the police. They filed a law suit in which many people testified.
Alice is able to look at her case impassively enough to see that she had many things going for her in achieving a conviction; Things that were a matter of chance, as it happens, but which allowed her to see it through in a way that someone of different circumstances might not have.
She amazingly, is able to portray herself, as "lucky" - lucky to be bright, well-spoken; lucky to have been wearing concealing rather than revealing clothes on the night of the rape; lucky to have had no sexual history to hold against her; lucky to be alive.
Alice has a true talent for telling her story. And it is a story full of pain, healing, rage and sadness. She tells the story with such passion and such detail that it's hard to put down for five minutes.
I would recommend this book to anyone who can stand to read a sad detailed account of a rape and the aftermath of one. Girl or boy, Man or Woman, this story is a sad but true story, a story that I think every one should read. I would give this book 5 out of 5 for its sad story, the sad story that will haunt you for the rest of your life.