I realize that I haven't given much of a book review for this as of yet. Just a personal reaction... Here's a more formal review.
"lucky" is a brave, intelligent and unsentimental examination of rape and its aftermath. At times raw, funny, intimate, and devastating, Sebold does a tremendous thing. She takes her experience and writes a book about a community, a society in which rape can and does happen. The book is not only about herself, it is about the every person she touches on her journey and how they change and are changed by their interaction. The people you will meet in this book are extraordinary, because they are everywhere. It's astonishing. I think it can't all be real, she must be making this up. This woman lived only twenty minutes from where I've lived my whole life. The mild Philadelphia suburbs. She attended Syracuse. Manicured lawns, decent dorms, well lighted quads.
The strange thing is, after reading this book you realize that Alice, for all the undeserved violence and terrible life-shattering events, actually is comparatively lucky. She makes the point that her innocence - her virginity, her baggy clothes, her utter sobriety, the observable cuts and bruises, all were to her advantage. And still, when her father hears that the rapist dropped the knife (unbeknownst to her) early in their struggle, he says "How could you have been raped if he didn't have a knife?"
I won't give more away. I will just repeat that this book is more than worthwhile. It will open a world to you that has been here all along. It may not be pretty, but it is searingly, achingly human.
"You save yourself or remain unsaved." You don't have to be raped to learn from that.
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