Lucky

Rating:
Summary: A TRIUMPH OVER TRAGEDY
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Very lucky
Review: Lucky by Alice Sebold is a very good and emotional book. It is about a girl (Alice) who was an 18 when year old college freshman, attending Syracuse University to study poetry. After a party Alice was walking back to her dorm when she was forced off a park path, pulled into a tunnel and then brutally raped. The rape not only changed Alices life, but the rest of her families life and the people she knew as well. After the rape Alice went to the hospital to get checked out and get evidence if she chose to go to trial. It turned out that Alice had been beat up pretty bad and because of that she decided to go to trial and prove that her rapist, Madison, guilty. Going to trial was not only to make Alice feel safer, but to keep Madison from doing it again. After going through two pre-trials Alice finally got to go to the real trial that would determine if Madison was guilty or not. The trial lasted a few days, and on the last day Alice was asked to testify. She was asked many hard and grousome questions about the rape that she did not want to answer. After the long excruciating pain of the trial Madison was found guilty and was sent to prison.

A few months after the trial Alice began to get her life back on track, but then another devistating event happened in her life. Alices best friend, Lila, was raped. After Lilas rape Alice went into a total meltdown mode and was not able to recover from it for many years.

Lucky is an excellent book. The way Alice Sebold wrote about her rape made you feel like you knew exactly what she was feeling. It is a very grousome book and will make you think about what is going on until the late hours of the night. Lucky is a book that really keeps you interested and wanting to read more. I recommend this book to anyone who likes suspense, and doesn't mind a very detailed, grousome book. It is a must read book!

Rating:
Summary: A Male's Perspective
Review: Straight away, let me mention that I also read The Lovely Bones; my opinion of that book was that it was contrived; after the first 60 pages it didn't really work for me.

Now this book: Very Impressive! This is a tough story to tell and the author did a great job. The voice is authentic and the details make it real, and I learned alot: i.e. how men convicted of rape usually beat the rap. (I didn't know this; thought in fact the opposite was true!) Hang on through the entire book. The beginning is violent and intense -- and you may want to turn away or put it down -- don't! Keep reading. You heart will go out to this young woman, as my heart did. Keep reading, even through the later sections, the trial which, for me, was toughest part because it almost reads like a court transcription.

Now the kicker. Right when you think the book is over and you think the protagonist (or the author) is a "winner" -- pow! -- flashforward to the East Village years later. Here you'll see how although she managed to convict her rapist, she hasn't managed to put the entire event behind her. This is not a Hollywood ending. The protagonist/author experiences an aftershock of fear and self-loathing that she is unable to control, that pursues her even into another city, even years later; she can't seem to escape it. This epilogue is what really made me love this book. Life goes on, yes -- but misfortune sometimes takes a huge chunk of our spirit. And yet you must still go on! This book is a tribute to a true survivor, a book about real life; it now has a permanent place in my library. I recommend it strongly for those of you not afraid of entering the darkness, even for a moment; sometimes you need to enter the darkness in order to appreciate the light. I feel as if this book will stay with me a long time -- now that's great art! Along with this memoir, another book I'd like to recommend -- a much lighter, funnier book ('cause we all need to laugh too, my God) -- is The Losers' Club by Richard Perez. Quite sweet and haunting, too; a comedy with a soul.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: The best book I've read this year. I've passed the CD on to my husband and a number of friends. They all loved it and couldn't stop listening.

Rating:
Summary: A real tale, full of sound and fury
Review: This book is so many things, but the one that comes first to mind is "brave." For Seabold to have written this is amazing--the courage it must have taken. But that aside, it is well-written. I read "Lovely Bones" first, and then this one. While the premise of "Lovely" was great, I found "Lucky" to be a better book. Don't get me wrong, I like both of them, but "Lucky" was by far the more "real" tale. Try them both and then decide for yourself.

Also recommended: McCrae's Bark of the Dogwood, A Boy Called It

Rating:
Summary: Lucky Review
Review: When Alex Sebold was eighteen, enrolled as college freshman at Syracuse University, she was attacked and raped on the last night of school walking home late at night. She was forced onto the ground in a dark tunnel "among the dead leaves and broken beer bottles." She gives descriptive details of the rape and its immediate aftermath inside the dorm, while at the police station, and at home with her parents. After going to the police she was informed that the same place where she had been raped there had been the murder of a different young woman, and was also raped. Alex Sebold considered herself very lucky. Thus as a writer she decided to share her life altering experience. Changing the names of all characters for privacy, this book was non the less very, very moving.

Alice Sebold not only wrote through this book about how she overcame her rape and was able to survive it. She also gave the her audience a certain amount of knowledge of the real world and the dangers that come along with it. It is an amazingly well written book. A memoir is self-centered descripted work. She wrote in a sense for herself, victims who have encountered the same situation or a very similar situation. I have not read her other book, The Lovely Bones, but after reading this very moving book I am curious of what The Lovely Bones could do to move me like this one did.