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.
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.
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