Lucky

After her brutal rape on the Syracuse University campus in 1981, Alice Sebold was told she was lucky to be alive. The previous victim had been murdered. With unsparing honesty, Sebold pulls us into that tunnel where, amid glass and filth, she is viciously attacked and beaten. Syracuse police, rape crisis workers, and the reactions of other students mark her transformation from a bright college coed, an 18-year-old virgin, to "the girl who was raped." Her life is forever altered, as are her relationships with everyone, from her fragile mother given to panic attacks and her tightly wired father to the sister who feels upstaged by everything Alice does. Sebold's reading is remarkable for its exacting self-control. Her memoir is hard and human. Her reading is mesmerizing. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

February 3, 2003
Sebold's memoir of her rape as a college freshman and its aftermath is searingly honest and harrowing, and her quiet, personal narration is equally riveting. The gifted author occasionally tinges her intimate tone with irony as she acknowledges the bitter paradoxes of her situation (e.g., the vicious beating she received from the rapist became a "plus" during the trial, because her bruises and wounds proved the encounter wasn't consensual). She also finds irony when a police officer tells her she was lucky because she was "only" raped, not murdered, and later, when the police view her as a "successful rape victim" (one whose rapist ended up behind bars). Through her prose and her reading, Sebold ably conveys both the raw immediacy of her feelings at the time, and her more insightful, aware viewpoint of today. She notes that a year after the rape, she felt she was over it and had successfully moved on, then acknowledges that, looking back, it wasn't true and she was just putting on a brave face. There's also hurt bewilderment in her voice as she recalls how her best friend (whom she met after the rape, but who knew about it and was supportive), froze her out completely after she herself was raped. This is the inspiring story of a survivor who allows listeners to follow her from trauma to recovery. Based on the Scribner hardcover.