Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile but flawed
Review: I was raped. My experiences during and after (the hospital, police, life) were far different from Alice Sebold's. The thing I liked least about this book were her generalizations to all rape victims, or survivors if you choose. She writes sentences such as, "When you're a rape victim you become a celebrity," referring to all on her college campus who knew of her rape. The sentences she writes in the second person, "When you're raped..." are simply her experience. She presupposes we all had her experience. I didn't become a celebrity; I was not treated by the police nor the hospital any way close to how she was; and, my life that followed differed very much from hers.However, the passages in the book--however brief--that did describe emotions I feel or felt were powerful for me. I reread a couple of paragraphs as I was reading, just to see again - someone else knows *this* feeling, has *this exact* feeling. Some of the sameness of emotion made me feel connected. Most of our emotions, reactions, and actions--and those of the people around us--were very different. I feel resentful when I read or hear people speak of rape victims (and perpetrators) in finite and discrete categories of human behavior. Choice, too, is huge - many of us didn't have the opportunity even to pursue a criminal case. Many victims don't have supportive families or friends. She was indeed lucky in many ways. While this is one woman's story, and I respect it as that, it is written as a more universal story than it is. I am not like Alice Sebold. We were raped at a similar age and are close in age now, yet we are very different. This is one book for/about a rape victim, but it's a memoir and not a guide. If every sentence that she wrote in the second person, or that purported to generalize her situation to others', were changed to be simply in memoir format, the book would be greatly improved. As well, but less important, I was unimpressed by her writing skills to the point of distraction. Nevertheless, the read is fast and easy, and the book not overly long. Take a look - it's a glimpse into one woman's experience; but, for the sake of the rest of us, don't take it as gospel.
Rating: 
Summary: Emotionally Involved
Review: I was so emotionally involved with this book; I read it in 2 days. Sebold writes in a way that makes you feel you are the main character. When she was running; I felt out of breath. When she was crying; I wept. When she spoke of her parents; I saw my mom standing there. This book was probably the best I have ever read. I thought it would be too disturbing for me; but instead it opened my eyes to the trials others face in life. MUST READ
Rating: 
Summary: The most harrowing piece of non-fiction have ever read
Review: This book says it all about the misogynist judiciary, police and society that women have to live in.
I thought about this book for days after reading it.
Nothing I say here can do it justice.
I urge you to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: It was OK
Review: The story was a good, strong story, but the read was so sloooow. She writes very well, but to me, it's seems so slow. Perhaps she needed more elaboration and interactions with the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Conversion of a Misogynist
Review: I picked up this book(Audio Version) by mistake.I was going on a long trip and wanted to make driving productive time...so I got several books.
When I started with "Lucky" I was caught in the relentless grip of the author reading her book.I had no chance.For the first time ever I understood what rape is really about. It certainly is not the date rape stories I heard about in college,nor the threats from women using sex for leverage"Do this or I'll yell rape,and no one will believe you".For years if not most of my life ,I was decidedly unsympathetic and even a little suspicious of "rape" allegations. All that changed after Ms.Sebold's narrative.
I felt anger at all rapists,and even more so for the lawyers who defend such scum and go to great lengths to put the victim on trial as happened in this book.
It was obvious in the Sebold case that the lawyer,like many lawyers couldn't care less about justice and were interested only in "winning the case" so they could get a reputation and charge higher fees for the next rapist they defend.
It was obvious in this true story the lawyer and his relentless cross-examination had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with self aggrandizement and ego. 500 years ago Shakespeare in King Henry the VI had a character (Dick the Butcher) say "First we'll kill all the lawyers".....sentiment hasn't changed much
....
Ms Sebold was affected for years afterward and even entered the world of drugs and other self destructive pursuits.Was there a touch,though transitory feeling of Lesbian attraction?
Was this a predictable backlash?
The only thing not made clear in the book is why Sebold seemed to be blamed for a subseqent rape of someone close to her.Was this contagious ?
The humor is subtle but very much there..and she reveals herself as the intelligent, creative ,sensitive personality she must be. This is undoubtedly one of the best,well written and spell binding books I have ever experienced.
I recommend it highly especially to men,and anyone who may someday serve on a jury. John Rodanis Margatis Douglas
Rating:
Summary: Startling and Memorable
Review: I read The Lovely Bones prior to reading this memoir, and together these two books make for a powerful journey that crosses the lines of fiction and memoir. By itself, Lucky is a startling and sometimes horrific survival story. Alice Sebold describes her violent attack and the subsequent events in painful clarity. I found the descriptions of her family's and friends' reactions to be both disturbing and painfully real. After reading the book I was left with disgust of the judicial system, fear for young women on campuses everywhere, and respect for a talented writer who is able to cut through "Law and Order" type detail and tell her story with the perfect balance of heart and mind. My advice? Read them both.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping story - you'll finish it quickly!
Review: This book was a hauntingly good read. I spent 3 days reading this book in between work and caring for children - while I cooked dinner, while I fed the baby, whenever I could. It's the type of book that you can't put down because you really can't predict what's going to happen. Alice is a unique individual, and this story is written with such clarity and honesty that I actually had nightmares from it. Never had I thought so long and hard about the brutal aftermath of a rape - it was very enlightening.
Rating:
Summary: Not her best effort!
Review: I did not walk away from this book feeling moved and blown away like I did the Lovely Bones. I know this is her personal story but I don't think she captured the emotions that she did in the Lovely Bones.
Rating:
Summary: A necessary story.
Review: In many ways, Alice Sebold's memoir, Lucky, is a relief from the indomitable statistics that go along with 'rape' in the modern brain, the faceless inconceivability of it all. Sebold (The Lovely Bones) tells the story of her rape at eighteen with the eye of a novelist, and of one familiar with the tendency of a girl's story to be over-written. We get the crime thriller stats alongside the girl's: she remembers the mistakes of the cop who took her first affidavit, and she remembers picking out what she would wear to console her mom when she arrived. Bringing together these extremes'the real life and the real crime'makes Sebold's story as inhabitable as it is emblematic.
In surveys, one in four female coeds report sexual offenses; less than half of these make it to the police, and less than half of these make it to court. An offense as violent as the one Sebold describes is not uncommon, but the telling of it, strangely, is. This and the fact that Sebold is successful in convicting her rapist make her a natural heroine for purposes beyond the literary. But she is literary, and careful to deconstruct her heroism where it matters. Sebold describes herself as a character predefined by her family and secondarily by her rape, both of which events bring out the best and the worst in her. Her story is full of recovery, of herself, her humor, and her independence, and yet she never recovers. What makes Lucky a page-turner is not a straight path through conflict to resolution, but Sebold's sense of plot. She has a way of darting between a courtroom scene and a dorm-room giggle-fest and making it all feel equally relevant, the mutual conspiracy of her life. There is also the relevance of how others respond, or are unable to respond, to her life, a thread that Sebold sticks to with meticulous journalism. What emerges is a naturalistic review of the sexual politics and cultural demons that cannot and must not be separated from rape, but that, in any context but the personal, are all too easy to deny. As Sebold says, facts don't graduate from fiction until they are assigned to a name. The reactions in particular of the men in her story who encounter rape are vengeful at best. 'I could understand it,' she says near the end, 'but I didn't have much patience for it anymore. Violence only begat more violence. Couldn't they see it left all the real work to the women? The comforting and the near impossible task of acceptance.' Such commentary is direct and well earned. What keeps the story personal is the actions that linger. There is a sentence written in ball-point pen on her leg, underneath the long skirt she smoothes primly on the witness stand. It reads, You Will Die. And, she emphasizes, 'I didn't mean me.' Lucky is the kind of story whose justification for existence is inherent'it is a story shared by many, and heard by few. The fact that it is, while devastating, more palatable than statistical rape awareness is crucial precisely because it shares the need to include, and to be included. There is a prevalent sense in reading it that Sebold is speaking from beyond the grave, from a no man's land defined by a reality of fundamental violence that only she can recognize. 'In the tunnel where I was raped,' the book begins, ''a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky. But at the time, I felt I had more in common with the dead girl than with the large, beefy police officers or my stunned freshman-year girlfriends. The dead girl and I had been in the same low place. We had lain among the dead leaves and broken beer bottles.' Her answer: to put us there too.
Rating:
Summary: Only The Strong Survive
Review: Pertaing to the novel, "Lucky," I percieved this book to be quite astounding and miraculous. I mean the story of a young, eighteen year old college freshman being brutally raped and beaten and her triumphant will and strenght to go on with her life or at least what was left of it. What I loved most about the book was the idea that despite Alice's horrific rape, she still manages to go on to the next milestone in her life. Alice does indeed learn to trust and confide in herself as well as other people. Tricia is one of Alice's peers from the Rape Crisis Center and Alice feels that the two of them are on the same page, dealing with rape and all. Alice feels like she can talk and confide in Tricia and that in return she will understand. Alice also comes accross Gail, her lawyer. Gail is everything Alice wants to be and accomplish. Gail throughout the story prepares Alice for the enevidable and instills in her faith and hope. Gail is in a way a sort of role model for Alice. The toughest challenge Alice has to face is convicting and facing Gregorey Madison, her rapist. Alice won't stop until he is behind bars. Overall, I thought this novel was a page turner and it gave me alot of honor to read it. Alice Sebold is an amazing woman.
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