Lucky

Lucky by Alice Sebold


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was an intense book that is definitely not for everyone. Written by the author of The Lovely Bones, Lucky is a memoir about Sebold's rape when she was a freshman at Syracuse University in the early 80s. I listened to this which made it more intense, as it is read by Sebold herself.

There were two parts that really stick with me. The first paragraph gripped me from the start. It reads, "In the tunnel, where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of the crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said I was lucky."

I'm in no way trying to compare my situation after the accident to the horror of being raped, but strangely, after delving into her story, we shared some things in common at the core of our experience in dealing with a traumatic incident. I was told by countless people that I was lucky. I know they were just trying to comfort me in any way they knew how, but the thing is, just because you were lucky an unfortunate incident wasn't worse, it doesn't make your situation any easier. This was certainly the case for Sebold.

The last line of the book also really affected me. "I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand." I think this is beautiful. In so many ways, it perfectly describes what life has been like since the accident. I have days that are absolutely horrible when the accident and everything it has taken from me and every way it has changed me, consume me. But around February, I started to have days full of hope as well. Slowly, but surely, the "hope" days have started to outnumber the "hell" days. This is a trend I'd like to continue.

We all come to books with our own experiences and read it through our own unique world views. This book is no different. I definitely came to it during my recovery from the accident, and I'm really glad I read it at this time in my life.

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