Rating:  Summary: Incredibly Entertaining Review: "Lucky", by Alice Sebold is a wonderful book from the viewpoint of a rape victim and how it affected her in her daily life. This is an important read for all adults. An honest opinion from Sebold, helps us understand the process and aftermath of any rape victim. It's very pleasurable to read and I reccomend it.
Rating:  Summary: So Lucky Review: There are several books out there at the moment that tell the truth without sensationalising what really happens during any time of abuse to a child/teen. This book, LUCKY, and then NIGHMARES ECHO and A CHILD CALLED IT. If you have a chance to read the three books you will come away with the understanding of the mind of the victim and the difficulty in overcoming what is put upon thier shoulders. More than that, you realize just how fragile a childs life is and yet they have more courage and determination to survive than many of the people I know that have never dealt with a terrible past. I belive this book stands out, it is extrememly well done without going overboard. The emotions are strong. Extremely good book. Marrissa Diangelo
Rating:  Summary: Heroic and Painfully Real Review: I read the 'Lovely Bones' before reading 'Lucky' and I must admit that I was initially skeptical reading 'Lucky.' However, Sebold's account of the rape and her experience reveals that she is strong, yet human. The effects of the experience lingered with her long after it occured. In addition, it is quite enlightening to see how her personal experience may have influenced her "fictional" writing in the 'Lovely Bones'. What a therepeutic mechanism for overcoming such a devestating event!
Rating:  Summary: I Need to Talk to This Author!! Review: I've been thinking about writing Alice Seabold. Mainly because the ending to her book and the ending to mine is a bit similar. My book is about living with veterans of WWII - actually being a "veteran" of living with veterans - and also ending up with Post Traumatic Shock Syndrome... My book is called "Eating Corn Through a Picket Fence" and I hopes she reads it - and this too!!
Rating:  Summary: Alice Sebold's masterpiece Review: Frankly, I liked (if that's a word that can be used about a book concerning the subject of personal rape) Lucky more than The Lovely Bones, her second book, the one that put her on the map. Perhaps 'appreciated' would be a better word for my feelings about Lucky. To bare oneself, to detail the experience of rape so unsparingly, to extend the memoir back to her childhood and forward to her downward spiral into heroin addiction and depression is to strip naked for your public. It takes guts, something Alice Sebold has in spades. The book's title comes from a comment by a cop that she should consider herself "lucky" to have just been raped, as another young woman was murdered in the same spot just a short time earlier. Not feeling very "lucky," Sebold proceeds to show how this incident of brutality and violence changed the course of her life. I have heard Alice Sebold speak on several occasions and greatly admire her candor, her honesty, and her insistence on calling rape by its true name. Bravo for this sere and scathing memoir by a remarkable woman and writer.
Rating:  Summary: Not a Self Help book but... Review: This memoir rang true to me. In no way is it a self help book, it probably won't help anybody 'get over it'. It reflects so closely my own experience of the detachement and the impact on my close familly that it was scary. I must say it was compelling for me to hear her story. Some readers have commented on the lack of advice on how to get over it, well, is she really over it? Are you?
Rating:  Summary: an evocative but flat account Review: "Lucky" is Alice Sebold's memoir of her psychosexual development, centering on her rape as a college freshman. Intelligent and keenly observed, it recounts the rape itself, the rapist's trial, and the aftermath during the remaining years of Sebold's college career; it also delves into Sebold's childhood and her adult attempts to heal.There is much that is good about this book. Like its teller, the story is smart and strong. The voice is wry and sympathetic. Sebold's extensive recounting of the long-term aftereffects of the rape is valuable, since all too often a victim's trauma is seen as ending after several months or a year. But "Lucky" is not, ultimately, a really good book. Something is missing, an emotional connection between the narrator and the reader, or the narrator and the other characters, that is not made. The ending seems not to resonate. Perhaps this is because, in writing her story as a memoir, Sebold has chosen a form that does not allow for evolution in the narrator or for extensive authorial knowledge of the other characters. Ultimately, she is unable to rise out of this form: "Lucky" is the skilled telling of a story, nothing less and nothing more.
Rating:  Summary: Excellent - worth 4 and a half stars Review: This book held me captive at night over a period of a few days, and I spent a few days sleepwalking at work as a result. The book is Alice Sebold's true story of her struggle to find herself again after enduring a violent rape. It is a rich story that manages to be both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Being young and finding your path in life is hard enough, but Sebold's journey is compounded by a mother who has problems with anxiety, and then compounded further by being raped by a stranger. In addition to the story of how rape changed her, Sebold tells the story of where she came from and the people who shaped her. Her personality is portrayed as complex, and her marvelous sense of humour is revealed, even despite the darkness of the book's subject matter. My favourite illustration of this is when she plays a prank on her uptight and stodgy father while they are staying in separate beds in a hotel room. The results of her sneaky trick are hilarious! I won't give it away by telling you....but I still find myself smiling about it when I think about it. The reader follows Sebold's changed version of herself as she picks us the pieces of her life in the aftermath. She goes through the stages of grief in a way that is unique to Sebold, proving that we all cope differently when faced with a traumic event. Sebold releases her feelings and her anger through her poetry, with the help of her friends, and yet there still remains a large sense of loss in her. Perhaps this book was finally her vehicle to closure and healing, as is suggested in the Aftermath that follows the story. This book will shock you, sadden you, and yet still entertain you. Her writing is intense and just wonderful, and I highly recommend this book.
Rating:  Summary: an amazing book Review: Ms. Seabold outdoes herself with this newest book "Lucky". I am a past vicitm myself and so throughout the book was able to see the same despair she had felt, the same feelings of something isn't right in my life...She does a brilliant job of telling it like it is. This book is even better than her other book "The Lovely Bones". I also would like to recommend Nightmares Echo. I was fortunate enough to get both books and read them one after the other.
Rating:  Summary: Impressive Review: While I was not impressed by Alice Sebold's Lovely Bones (considered it to be severely overrated), I was deeply affected by her memoir, Lucky. Her account of her rape at age 18 was the most gripping peice of writing I have ever read; I actually felt physical pain. While feeling physical pain is not usually my goal when reading for pleasure, I credit Sebold for writing with such authenticity that I actually felt I was experiencing it myself (unfortunately, it also had the effect of heightening my fear of rape). The rest of the book discusses the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, including the rape trial that took place the following year, and is peppered with commentary that comes with 20 years' hindsight. There is something to be gained from this memoir -- quite simply, raw insight into the experience of rape. While I agree with other Amazon reviewers that Sebold does not delve sufficiently into the long-term effects of her rape (the "rest of her life" is crammed into a short portion at the end of the book), I appreciated this book so much for what it was, and didn't look further to what it could have been.
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