Lucky (Megan Leese)

Lucky
Alice Sebold
Little, Brown and Company
246 pages

I found this book in my bookshelf in my living room. My mom had bought it and read it about a year ago.

Summary: Lucky is a true story of the author, Alice Sebold, and her brutal assault and rape during her freshman year of college. This book shows a very realistic look at the recovery of a rape victim such as Alice, who was only eighteen years old when she was raped. The police told her that she was lucky to have escaped the fate of another girl who had been murdered and dismembered in the same spot, but Alice felt that she was in a sense murdered by her rapist because life as she had known it would never be the same. Alice was known as “the girl who was raped” to her fellow classmates, and most kids in the school didn’t talk to Alice after her rape, but she quickly found comfort in writing and used it to cope with her rape. Throughout this book, Alice meets a few friends and goes on a couple dates, but the healing process is a long one, and the rape haunts her every day. Later in the book, Alice’s rapist is found and put on trial. In the end of the book, her rapist, Madison, was guilty with six counts of rape. He was sentenced to a maximum sentence for rape and sodomy of eight and one third to twenty five years in jail. Alice felt drained of all emotion, but winning her case gave Alice hope to keep going, and inspired her to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer.

Audience: The audience of this book is anyone who has ever been though a situation similar to Alice’s, because this book could inspire rape victims to get past their rape and to continue to keep living their lives as best as they can.

Author’s Style of Writing: Alice Sebold has a very simple style of writing. She explains the story in first person, and also uses a lot of description throughout this book that creates a vivid picture in the reader’s mind of what is occurring in the novel. By her style of writing, the readers feels as if they are experiencing everything she is going through, and she makes you feel her emotions. “The black man squatting on the sidewalk in West Philadelphia, or the beautiful boys at Penn, throwing a Frisbee, the bright orange disc arching up and down into my path,”(55).

Passages:
1) “I feel like I’ve lain underneath all these men,” (53). This really struck me because it shows me how much of an impact the rape had on her life. She was at a train station and just by seeing men made her remember the rape. It demonstrates that no matter where she goes, all she can think about is getting raped.
2) “Nice boys don’t ask rape victims out!” (70). I chose this quote because it makes me imagine how hard her life must have been after she had been raped. People didn’t want to be friends with her and no boys wanted to date her because she had been raped. Boys were probably afraid to date Alice, and it was already hard enough for her to be raped. Since everyone in her school knew she was raped, it made it impossible for Alice to attempt to get past it.
3) “What I took away from that afternoon, besides his assurance that he would call me soon and we would see each other again, was that one word to my question: no,” (72). This quote showed me that even though Alice was raped, some people didn’t judge her and liked her for who she was. When Alice told a boy named Tom what had happened to her and she asked him if it changed how he felt about her, he said no. That shows me that there was still hope for Alice, and Tom helped her get through her difficult situation by showing her that it didn’t matter if she was raped because he liked her for her.

Interaction: I couldn’t really relate to this book because I have never been through a situation like Alice Sebold went through, but by reading this book, I understood what it would feel like to be raped. Her descriptions painted a picture in my head that moved me, and made me feel how she felt. I think that it is very rare to be able to feel how the author or character felt while reading the book, which shows me that Alice Sebold is an extremely talented author. I felt very sad reading this book because not only did Alice get raped and beaten by Madison, but no one would talk to her or try to get to know her because they knew what had happened to her. After reading this book, I felt like I had experienced everything in the book for myself, and it certainly gave me a different perspective of how rape victims struggle living their lives after being raped.