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Lucky

By Alice Sebold

(79)

| Paperback | 9780330418362

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Book Description

Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.

Sebold fulfills a promise that she made Continue

Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.

Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not sink the woman she later became.

It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight) encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever really recover. In an account that is at once heartrending and hilarious, we see Alice's spirit prevail as she struggles to have a normal college experience in the aftermath of this harrowing, life-changing event.

No less gripping is the almost unbelievable role that coincidence plays in the unfolding of Sebold's narrative. Her case, placed in the inactive file, is miraculously opened again six months later when she sees her rapist on the street. This begins the long road to what dominates these pages: the struggle for triumph and understanding -- in the courtroom and outside in the world.

Lucky is, quite simply, a real-life thriller. In its literary style and narrative tension we never lose sight of why this life story is worth reading. At the end we are left standing in the wake of devastating violence, and, like the writer, we have come to know what it means to survive.

Critics

  • Lucky

    La presentazione e le recensioni di Lucky, opera di Alice Sebold edita da Edizioni E/O. Alice Sebold ci consegna il resoconto dello stupro subito all'età di diciotto anni. Il suo Lucky non tralascia alcun particolare, i più segreti ingranaggi psicolo ... (read full critics)

    Qlibri published on Thu, 1 Dec 2011

  • 'Lucky' by Alice Sebold

    This is a searing and incredibly moving account of Sebold's rape as an 18-year-old college freshman in 1981. Brutally honest from cover to cover, Sebold does not pull any punches, whether describing her emotionally cold upbringing, the rape itself or ... (read full critics)

    readingmatters published on Mon, 27 Sep 2010

7 Reviews

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  • 3 people find this helpful

    I liked the perspective Sebold used. She wrote as she would have spoken at that age. You could really tell her age. There are many points in this book I would have appreciated more detail. The opening scene was very graphic and intense.

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    SheReads said on Mar 6, 2007 | Add your feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    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 st ... (continue)

    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 the 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 prodoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

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    meganzing said on Feb 16, 2008 | Add your feedback

  • Now, I'm not about to say that rape shouldn't be written about, or that victims should be quiet, not at all; it's just that I didn't like the author's way of writing. It really left me with the feeling of annoyance, which is a crap feeling if the book you're reading is about rape. Maybe it's only me ... (continue)

    Now, I'm not about to say that rape shouldn't be written about, or that victims should be quiet, not at all; it's just that I didn't like the author's way of writing. It really left me with the feeling of annoyance, which is a crap feeling if the book you're reading is about rape. Maybe it's only me being cynical, but in any case, these are just my 2 cents.

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    Viollka said on May 25, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • ...

    This book can be a very hard book for some to read due to the graphic details. Alice Sebold though is a wonderful author and wrote amazingly how rape and life after rape can affect a young person. Amazing story that I might just read again.

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    Jonealle7 said on Jan 14, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • An excellent well written account of her brutal rape, an emotional and therefore difficult read. However would recommend it highly to others. It was fifteen years after she was raped that Alice Sebold wrote this memoir and even after this length of time it must have tken courage to write about somet ... (continue)

    An excellent well written account of her brutal rape, an emotional and therefore difficult read. However would recommend it highly to others. It was fifteen years after she was raped that Alice Sebold wrote this memoir and even after this length of time it must have tken courage to write about something so personal that effected her so deeply. I admire her for doing so and am glad I read it.

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    Lindyloumac said on Oct 2, 2009 | Add your feedback

  • *** This comment contains spoilers! ***

    Gritty

    If you can call Alice Sebold's memoir of her rape and the trial that followed during her first years of college "good," then this is a great book. Thank God I've never been through the harrowing experience of rape, but I felt my cheeks burn when she spoke of her shame (on many levels), and I cheer f ... (continue)

    If you can call Alice Sebold's memoir of her rape and the trial that followed during her first years of college "good," then this is a great book. Thank God I've never been through the harrowing experience of rape, but I felt my cheeks burn when she spoke of her shame (on many levels), and I cheer for her recovery.

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    Marion the librarian said on Jan 12, 2009 | Add your feedback

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9780330418362 Paperback $12.64 $10.40 The Book Depository
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