Rating: 
Summary: Unflinching and honest
Review: "Lucky" should not be thought of as a "book about rape." It is instead the memoirs -- the life story -- of a woman, which just happens to have rape at its center. This is just as much about growing up, discovering who you are -- seeking love, acceptance, approval -- gaining friendship and confidence -- understanding those around you. Sebold had to deal with a distant father, a neurotic, panic-attack-prone mother, and a sister she could never really connect with. This is, however, an astounding book about dealing with rape, and how the people around you deal with it. In this case Sebold had to unfortunately hear her father's incomprehension at how she was raped if the man didn't have a weapon (he seems to be implying she didn't fight enough), and a therapist who (quite unbelievably) says "I guess you won't be so hung up on sex anymore, eh?" In lucid, lean prose, Sebold bravely lays out the details of her experience, letting you into her wounded mind -- a wound that never fully healed till years later (if ever). Ultimately, what this book tells you is how, when you're raped, it steals who you are. Everything you do -- every move you make -- has a connection to rape. You are not yourself; you are "the girl who was raped." You can't simply date a guy. If you becomes serious with him, he needs to get "the talk." As Sebold points out, her rapist stole her life from her. The book takes you from the rape, her "recovery," and into the trial of the man who committed the crime. I found the book fascinating and I applaud Sebold for writing it. If it has any "flaw" I would point out the section -- the last fifty pages -- taking place after the trial. It's not that I don't want to hear what became of Sebold and how she continued to deal, but somehow things take a slightly TV-movie-of-the-week turn. I know it all happened and she can't change reality, but it felt a little odd and didn't quite fit the simple honesty of the book. When you read it, you'll understand. You can't accuse someone of a cliche when they're writing their life story, but it still feels that way. But, besides this, "Lucky" is a bold, honest, insightful work about an event that changed the author's life forever. I highly recommend it -- for those that have survived, are trying to, or those that want to understand.
Rating: 
Summary: A powerful voice
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Determined Young Woman
Review: This memoir of the author's horrible rape and beating while she was a college student, written many years later, is a moving account of a terrible part of her life. Her courage and persistence in seeking justice for herself was admirable because one can only imagine how difficult this was for her. She never gave up during her long journey from fear to hope. Sebold spared no details in this honest portrayal, but she never resorted to whining about it or self-pity. I admire her greatly for this attitude...she is a braver woman that I could ever be. She pushed on, basically alone, showing her inner strength as she battled her demons and the inability of her friends to deal with her rape. I thought that her passage through the legal system was especially well told and revealing. I thought the part entitled "Aftermath" was a bit out of place --it was just sort of tacked on and I really did not need to read about the author's drug use and sex life after college. I would have liked to read about how she dealt with the aftermath of the rape as it affected her relationships with men, her parents, her friends, and her career decisions.
Rating:
Summary: A jewel of a book
Review: Sebold turns the tragic into the beautiful -- all the while maintaining her honesty, sense of self, and wicked sense of humor. Plath reincarnate with a sarcastic edge, if you felt an empty spot after finishing _The Bell Jar_, this novel is for you.
Rating:
Summary: In like a Lion, out like a Lamb but powerful and compelling.
Review: Usually I avoid books like this-it's just so hard to connect with the whole concept of being raped if you're a man with no history of being violent or with being a victim of violence (though I was robbed at gunpoint and bashed over the head with a pistol once). Anyway, I was given this book by my sister who told me that it wasn't the ususal ... and that I would really get caught up in this most unusual of memoirs. My sister was right. The opening 40 or so pages of Ms. Sebold's book are amazing--you are drawn into this very personal and painful memoir with hooks straight our of the best crime fiction--Ross MacDonald and James Ellroy fans take note! And as she dips back into her childhood and adolescene in the first one-third to one-half of the book Miss Sebold paints with seemingly disjointed anecdotal meories a portrait so vivid it simply amazes me. Miss Sebold is a helluva story teller--can't wait for some fiction from this writer. "Lucky" loses steam in the last third of the book--after the rapist is tried and convicted. In telling of her last three years of college and the decade of debauchery (heroin and indiscriminte sex) that follows, Miss Sebold uses the same techniqes that make the first half of the book so powerful, but they fall flat here and just don't have the ring of "truth" or any sense of urgency--the book is just playing itself out. A violent scene where Miss Sebold's companion is brutally beaten while trying to "cop" some heroin on the lower east side of New York just leaves me empty--I have no feeling one way or the other and no empathy at all for either Miss Sebold or the boyfriend we don't even know--perhaps this is the point, but it just doesn't work for me. Still, it was wonderful to read this book and reassuring that a memoir of a brutal rape doesn't have to be a feminist diatribe. Good job, Miss Sebold--I can't wait to read more!
Rating:
Summary: A Perceptive Victim
Review: The author is not only clear about her experience, she maintains her perceptions of those around her as they struggle to reconcile their feelings of her experience. Being the victim is hard enough to deal with. Facing the inability of others to deal with and support her painful experience and emotional transition of healing, and having to be the strong one for others in her quest to move forward is a testimonial to her inner strength that this tragedy obviously brought to surface. "Lucky" is a thought provoking and inspiration read.
Rating:
Summary: Brutally honest, terrifying yet ultimately rewarding read
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Triumphant
Review: In 1980, as a college freshman at Syracuse University, Alice Sebold was brutally raped as she walked home through a park one night, and the event profoundly marked her life from then on. In this powerful memoir, at times shocking and other times humorous, Sebold recreates the event that scarred her life in grim detail, and recalls the decision she made to find and pursue the conviction of her attacker. With the help of her poetry professor Tess Gallagher and fiction prof Tobias Wolff, she was able to identify the man who robbed her of her virginity and left her physically and emotionally damaged, and to testify at the trial that sent him to prison. The opening chapter, in which the author details the brutal attack on her, left me crying, and the remaining chapters read like a gripping suspense novel and a triumphant account of justice. A powerful, moving read.
Rating:
Summary: Brave Woman . . .
Review: This first person account of a rape when the author was in college is gripping! The pages where she describes the rape are extraordinarily detailed and have a "you are there" quality (which is most frightening). This is the author's personal story, but probably also to some extent the story of all rapes. Excellent!
Rating:
Summary: wisdom for the innocent
Review: This nonfiction novel is well written and worthy of praise. However, I wouldnt have cared less if there were jarring tense shifts or spelling errors throughout this book - stories like Lucky need to be told. Applause to the publishers who print nonfiction tragic stories...a novel written about rape, or any of the sort, when revered as a literary spectacle to savour, swash around in our mouths like cognac while smoking a cigar, then we as human beings have hit a low point. At best, real life stories like Sebold's are meant to bust through the thick coats of denial, expose the bad guys, offer wisdom and transform hearts.
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