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."- from Goodreads
As horrible as the topic of this book is, the book is good. Sebold doesn't lead you up to the Rape, as soon as you open the book you are thrown into the gruesomly detailed scene. She doesn't hold back anything. She tells you it exactly how it went down.
I was completely engrossed until the end of the book. I wanted to find out wether her rapist would be condemned or wether he'd get away with it. I wanted to how Sebold would handle her rape, which she did very well. Her high spirits and funny sarcasm made the tension in her book lighten. Overall, this book isn't about a person being raped, its about a person coming out on top in a tragic situation.
Rating: 8
