Book Review: Lucky by Alice Sebold

Alice Sebold is best known for The Lovely Bones, a fictional story about a young girl who is raped and murdered by a creepy neighbor.  It was recently made into a movie.

I expected Lucky to be another uncomfortable story, something that makes you squirm. I hadn't read the description carefully and was surprised to find that it was a memoir about Alice Sebold's rape.  She a college freshman and, well, it was quite brutal.  It was a stranger in the woods story, something college women are told doesn't really happen.  Sebold goes through the rape, the aftermath, the trial.  She writes about her parents' reactions, how her friends react, how boys respond.

In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl has been murdered and dismembered.  I was told this story by the police.  In comparison, they said, I was lucky.

It's a hard read.  Because, like she points out, no one really knows how to treat a rape victim.  She gets mad about it, she cries about it, she makes jokes about it.  Everyone around her has similar reactions - they want to be overly helpful, they want to avoid her.

Lucky is an uncomfortable true story, it makes you squirm.

Read it.