Product Description

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 ad 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."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3410 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
Sebold is best known in this country for her bestselling novel, The Lovely Bones. Published in the UK for the first time, Lucky is an earlier work, the story of her own rape and its aftermath. The title derives from the comment of a police officer who told her that she was 'lucky' not to have been murdered. The memoir begins with an account of the rape itself. Sebold, an 18-year-old virgin, and a first-year student at Syracuse University, is walking back to campus one night when she is grabbed from behind by a man with a knife. The description of the brutal and vicious attack that follows is unsparing in its detail. Nonetheless, Sebold manages to persuade her attacker that she won't report him, and thus saves her own life. The story that follows is both harrowing and uplifting. Harrowing because Sebold finds that, as a rape victim, she doesn't receive the kindness and sympathy she might have expected - from the police, from her friends or even from her own family. Her father, on hearing that Sebold's attacker had dropped his knife in the struggle, asks: 'How could you have been raped if he didn't have the knife?' Uplifting because Sebold refuses to let the rape destroy her: 'You save yourself or you remain unsaved.' When the rapist is caught and tried, Sebold has to go through the trauma of cross-examination by a sneering defence barrister determined to undermine her evidence. Yet she triumphs; the court bailiff later tells her that she is the best rape witness he has ever seen. Sebold is unflinchingly honest about her feelings about what happened to her; this isn't an easy story of someone undergoing a trauma and overcoming it. On the contrary, Sebold's life goes to pieces - she starts drinking heavily and taking drugs - even as she convinces herself that she is unaffected by what has happened to her. Only years later does she realize that she is suffering from post-traumatic stress and that the experience has left deep psychological wounds. Yet even though she is unflinching in her account of the attack and its consequences, she is never self-pitying, never asks for sympathy. Don't be fooled into thinking, either, that this is just a memoir of a rape victim; Sebold is a fine writer and brings to her account a novelist's ability to tell a story. Horrifying though this book is, you'll find it hard to put down. And by the end, you'll find yourself feeling the deepest admiration for this exceptional woman. (Kirkus UK)

Guardian, 7 June
'Stunning candour'

Company, July 2003
'A powerful, disturbing, but essential read'

Customer Reviews

A gripping read
I found the start of the book where Alice describes the rape quite disturbing but gripping at the same time. I wanted to keep reading to find out how someone could possibly recover from such an ordeal.

Like others have said I felt like the book lost momentum in the latter chapters. After her attacker was brought to justice and Alice left University it kind of felt like the story finished. I suppose this is inevitable as it was a true story and not a piece of fiction with drama right up until the end.

I think it's worth reading for anyone to gain an insight into how a victim of such a crime might be feeling.

Gripping but a bit disjointed
Like some other reviewers I found this book gripping, reading it in 1 sitting, and was full of admiration for her strength and courage, but found the later sections of the book of how her life drifted into drug use and general lack of direction very disjointed and without sufficient explanation - I think she should either have ended it sooner or kept it for a second volume.
I also initially did not like the way the book started just like the Lovely Bones i.e. with the awful event itself - a bit unoriginal I thought to myself at the time - but I suppose I can understand the logic of starting with the central event.

Disappointing
This book is quite different to the excellent lovely bones. Although this book is also very well written & hard to put down, I found it very hard to read as a person who has also been attacked. Alice Sebold let herself become a rape victim, rather than survivor. I thought this ruined the book for me a little, especially in the way she seems to have judged her friend & thus other girls who have suffered this hideous crime.