Lucky

Rating:
Summary: paleeze
Review: I wouldn't have cared less if there were spelling errors or jarring tense shifts throughout this book. But there are none. Lucky is life as art in its truest form; well written and nonfiction. Anyone who has been through a rape and has truley worked through the horrible ordeal could not sit back and judge one rape book over another as if it were a literary spectacle to savour.

Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: I agree with the "reader from New York." I read Lucky a couple weeks ago, so it's not fresh in my mind, but the fact is, I really didn't learn much from it. Sebold talks plenty about her own life and her family, but the reader sees very little of her recovery process. The book is ultimately not so much about rape as it is about the author. This is not a bad thing in that it indicates that Sebold does not let the rape define her, but I think the book would be a much stronger piece of work if the author had made more of an effort to put her rape into a greater context and provided more perspective. Given that there are other memoirs by rape survivors out there, Sebold just doesn't give us enough reason to read hers. Nancy Venable Raine and Patricia Weaver Francisco both do much better.

Rating:
Summary: Shocking and impressive
Review: El libro de Alice Sebold es impresionante, porque es doloroso y apasionado. No es el placer del dolor ajeno, sino el dolor compartido y la pasion de seguir la lucha de una mujer por recuperar su sentido de la dignidad personal. Su estilo es a la vez periodistico y narrativo, sencillo y cercano a quienes leen. Su relato arrastra, conmueve y golpea algunas ideas que parecen tranquilas. Creo que cualquier ser humano debe leerlo.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning for Twelve Chapters or so...
Review: Bordering on sheer brilliance for its first twelve chapters, "Lucky" tails off somewhat unsatisfyingly in its afterword, losing the immediacy that makes it so compelling from word one.

While Lucky lacks "wholeness" in a literary sense, it is more than worth reading. Sebold's depiction of her family life in suburban Pennsylvania is a loving indictment with no equal; her superheroic rendering of Tess Gallagher a wonderful insight into the internal life of an aspiring young writer.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful, haunting and beautifully written.
Review: I read Lucky on a flight home. I couldn't put it down. I continued reading it while waiting for my luggage in the baggage claim area and I did not leave the airport until I read the last page. My autonomic nervous system took a beating. Alice's story haunts me. I think about the unintentional damage we do to people who have suffered an act of violence when we attempt to "understand." In our endeavor to put logic on the illogical, we tell ourselves that what happened was their fault, perhaps because of weakness or bad judgement. When we convince ourselves of this, we convince ourselves that we are in control our lives; random acts of violence couldn't possibly happen to us. Lucky blows apart this lie. Alice Sebold won't let you hide behind rationalization, explanation, or theoretical discussion on the ills of society to excuse or lighten the effects and the damage an act of violence has on another person. She will make you face the random, violent, crazy world we live in with a writing style that is direct, harsh and unapologetic. She never asks for your pity. But Lucky is also a story written with compassion, humor, warmth and intelligence. As Alice Sebold tells of her long and difficult journey from a place of fear, rage and despair to a place of meaning and hope, you cannot help but be humbled and awed at the complex union between fragility and strength in human beings. Lucky is a book you will remember long after you have finished the last page.

Rating:
Summary: a must read for attorneys in the field of criminal law
Review: Sebold takes us back stage, where the real battle is fought, and puts the court room drama in perspective. Attorneys so often get caught up in winning at all costs that they forget the human essence that drives the law. The author tears herself apart from the world of professional witnesses that seem to take center stage in today's trials, and shows us first hand what determination and a deeply rooted sense of decency and fair play can accomplish. Horray for the human spirit that can not only confront but also survive in an often times wicked system, and help breath life into our collective concept of justice. Courageous and fast paced, this is a must read for law students, prosecutors and defense attorneys.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Terrifying
Review: I was given this book to read by an editor from Scribners with whom I have been discussing my own memoir. He thought I might relate to Sebold's book and get some ideas as she attended the same university where I go: Syracuse. As she was also a virgin raped while a freshman. I couldn't put the book down, the subject matter completely captifying, terrifying, and inspiring me. Thank you Alice.

Rating:
Summary: intelligent and devastating
Review: I am grateful to Alice Sebold for sharing her story of the rape and trial she endured when still so young. It is an important story to share and a gift to others who have also survived a violent crime. It is a cogent, well-written, fast-paced read. I was rooting for her the whole way and devastated by the end. This is a story of coping when life takes such a tragic turn in such a young life.

Rating:
Summary: A stunningly honest book, written in a clear voice.
Review: Even before I write a commentary about Alice Sebold's book, I know that a mini-review like this could never do it justice. "Lucky" is an incredible book, written by an incredible author. What struck me most about Sebold's writing is her unadorned honesty. A previous reviewer stated that she found the characters to be cliche. I found the book and characters to be exactly the opposite. While reading "Lucky", I wondered to myself if I could be as open and honest as Sebold writes. Probably not, was my answer. "Lucky" is a book that is written with a clear and honest voice; a voice that stayed with me for weeks after reading the book. And there was humor. Humor which both surprised me--because it struck me that a book about rape shouldn't contain humor--then made perfect sense to me, because Alice Sebold is a human being and humor is one of the functions that human beings employ in dealing with pain.

This could have very easily have been a "poor me" book, and maybe some readers have the expectations that it should be more that type of book. One of the main reasons that I found "Lucky" to be as compelling as it is, is because of what it isn't. "Lucky" is not a book filled with self pity. I don't want to say that Sebold's book isn't emotional, because it most certainly is, but the emotions aren't worn on Alice Sebold's sleeves. She writes in a way in which a reader can understand some of the pain and trauma she has gone through (and I can only imagine, still deals with), but that emotion and pain does not get in the way of her being an excellent narrator. The narration in unnerving at times, because of how concise a writer Sebold is. She writes the story of her life and rape (as they are intertwined) in a very straight foward and matter-of-fact fashion. Maybe time and distance have allowed that type of narration to occur. But Sebold's straight fowardness has not resulted in a cold narration. "Lucky" is an incredible book written by a fragile human being; a human being who has bravely written what would have to be one of the most painful experiences ever to occur in anyone's life. In writing "Lucky", I feel that Alice Sebold has presented a gift to all of us. A gift of her pain, honesty, humor and fragility. I thank her for this gift.

Rating:
Summary: Kind of Disappointing and Incomplete
Review: Did I read the same book as these other reviewers? I think not. I am also a rape survivor and I look for sustenance in the stories of others who share my experience. I found this memoir to be pretty badly written and just plain, well -- overblown. Overblown with the author's self dramatization and sense of self importance -- yes, she wanted to grow up and be Ethel Merman. The me me me tone was annoying, and I found myself disliking a woman I ought to be having an affinity with. Why? She comes off as a very spoiled, very sheltered upper middle class white girl from a "My Mommy and Daddy Love me Ver Much" type of environment who never gave any serious thought to anyone or anything outside of her immediate orbit, either before or after her incident. No wonder she found her brush with reality shocking. She mimicks a "potpoiler" style, which just didn't work for me. Everything she wrote about herself may be true, but she and other characters seemed to behave like cliched characters in a T.V. movie.I got the feeling that this book was constructed from diary entries immediately following the unfortunate incident, jottings which haven't been fashioned into a real memoir. Much of it is just documentary -- her mundane undergraduate social life, a lot of day to day, when what this memoir really demanded was PERSPECTIVE -- after all, she wrote it about 15 years after the fact. I was much more interested in how the event affected her relations with men, with women, with society, with her own sexuality, with her choices of jobs, with her concept of herself as a success or failure, her career, personal and life choices. Time frame references from the early eighties to mid-nineties? Sexual and racial politics? Feminism? Bosnia? Hello! Anyone there! We got a little afterward on the progress of her life, which ought to have been the main story, which makes me sense that the author is still stuck in time, still immaturely obsessed with whether or not she's ugly or has fat thighs, or if guys like her. Everything is viewed within the lowest common denominator framework of her own life. There's just not enough intelligent or spiritual reflection and analysis. She prefers simple melodrama, which to me detracts from the seriousness of her story. The book is worth reading, because she has some good insights, here and there, buried beneath the potboiler style, such as that she wound up living in New York because it's a place that wears its violence on its sleeve -- but there's so much more she could have said. I'd like to hear how she approached life after, how her experience affected her modus operandi: Did she hook for her heroin habit? How did she manage grad school and adjunct teaching, financially? Were her parents paying for her the entire time? Did she in fact ever grow up? I get the sense not. Finally, teaching NYC ghetto students, she gets a sense of perspective on something she's clearly let define her life. But from all I hear from her, I intuit she would have wound up a self-obsessed mess, even if she hadn't been raped. We get a lot of the self centered persona of adolescence, but no adult reflection on who she was, then and now. She seems not to have evolved. Bottom line -- you have to wade through a lot of irrelevant junk to get a few pearls of insight here. If you are a survivor, I recommend Nancy Venable Raines', "After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back."