Lucky: A Memoir
Alice Sebold
Language: English
Pages: 198
ISBN: 2:00045331
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit-as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."
nice boy. "You look better than I thought," he said. "Thank you." "Reverend Breuninger made it sound like you were pretty badly beaten." I realized that, unlike the old ladies, he saw nothing hidden in those words. "You know, don't you?" I said. His face was blank. "Know what?" "What really happened to me." "They said in church you were robbed in a park." I watched him intently. I was unflinching. "I was raped, Tom," I said. He was stunned. "You can leave if you want," I said. I
the tunnel between two dorms that led to the odd door that was always locked. There were keys that needed to be stolen and people who needed to be distracted and finally, late at night, pink cake that needed to be disguised and hustled up to our rooms. But my dorm girlfriends were also fond of the bars on nearby Marshall Street and by spring they went regularly to fraternity keg parties. I hated fraternity parties. "We're just meat!" I yelled above the music to Tree, who was ahead of me in the
did. "And where did you see his car?" I said he'd parked in the Huntington Hall lot. "Bingo," he said. "It looks like we may have our man." He left again and I closed the mug book lying open on the typing table. All of a sudden, I didn't know what to do with my hands. They were shaking. I placed them under my legs and sat on them. I started to cry. A few minutes later I heard the dispatcher say, "Here he is!" and those inside the locked door cheered. I stood up and frantically searched
turned around. "I'm ready," I said. "Are you sure?" Lorenz said. "She said she was ready," Paquette said. I approached the clipboard while Lorenz held it for me. Everyone watched—Gail, Paquette, and Lorenz. I placed my X in the number-five box. I had marked the wrong one. I was excused. I saw Tricia in the hall. "How was it?" "Number four and five looked like identical twins," I said, before the uniformed policeman assigned to me led me into the conference room nearby. "Make sure she
called my boyfriend at work. He was brusque. A large crowd had just entered the bar. "What do you want me to do about it? Take a flashlight and do it or sit in the dark. Those are your choices." I decided I was being stupid, helpless. I used something I had learned in therapy, "inner talking," to psyche myself up for the chore. It was around 11:00 P.M. I reasoned this was not as bad as 2:00 A.M. To say the least, my inner talking was faulty. Down two flights and out into the street, around