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A review by dovesfalling
Lucky by Alice Sebold
5.0
Alice Sebold begins Lucky by telling us about her rape.
It's the kind of scene in a memoir that would normally have me flipping the pages quickly to escape it, much like how I can't watch the movie The Accused or read stories about the girl in India, on the bus. I think it's in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson when the main character describes how men don't understand vaginas. How they aren't just a "hole" but rather, they have folds and creases. How delicate they are. How easily hurt.
But with Lucky, I did read about her rape. I bore witness to it through her writing, to the way he dragged her beneath a dark tunnel and it opened like a mouth. How a girl had been murdered there not long before (Sebold was "lucky" according to the police, not to have met with the same fate), how the rapist forced his fist inside of her until he tore her open and she bled. How he was pleased with the blood, because it made it easier for him to rape her.
Her descriptions are bare, to the point but almost lyrical in their horror. She hears people laughing and cat-calling them - they think they are a couple having sex. She is forced to perform oral sex, and he pees on her. She begs him for her life, begs him, thinks she will do anything to live. Anything and in that moment, she goes to the darkest place imaginable, darker than the tunnel, so dark that the only person she relates to - later - is the girl who was murdered in that place where she lay. She feels kinship with that girl, who went to that dark place too.
Sebold's writing is stunning, and this is one memoir I've never forgotten.
It should be required reading for young men, to understand that women aren't just "holes", that vaginas have folds, creases, that they are delicate. That they are so easily hurt. As Laurie Halse Anderson herself said, when asked what questions she gets that shock her:
"I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped. The first dozen times I heard this, I was horrified. But I heard it over and over again. I realized that many young men are not being taught the impact that sexual assault has on a woman. They are inundated by sexual imagery in the media, and often come to the (incorrect) conclusion that having sex is not a big deal. This, no doubt, is why the number of sexual assaults is so high."
It's the kind of scene in a memoir that would normally have me flipping the pages quickly to escape it, much like how I can't watch the movie The Accused or read stories about the girl in India, on the bus. I think it's in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson when the main character describes how men don't understand vaginas. How they aren't just a "hole" but rather, they have folds and creases. How delicate they are. How easily hurt.
But with Lucky, I did read about her rape. I bore witness to it through her writing, to the way he dragged her beneath a dark tunnel and it opened like a mouth. How a girl had been murdered there not long before (Sebold was "lucky" according to the police, not to have met with the same fate), how the rapist forced his fist inside of her until he tore her open and she bled. How he was pleased with the blood, because it made it easier for him to rape her.
Her descriptions are bare, to the point but almost lyrical in their horror. She hears people laughing and cat-calling them - they think they are a couple having sex. She is forced to perform oral sex, and he pees on her. She begs him for her life, begs him, thinks she will do anything to live. Anything and in that moment, she goes to the darkest place imaginable, darker than the tunnel, so dark that the only person she relates to - later - is the girl who was murdered in that place where she lay. She feels kinship with that girl, who went to that dark place too.
Sebold's writing is stunning, and this is one memoir I've never forgotten.
It should be required reading for young men, to understand that women aren't just "holes", that vaginas have folds, creases, that they are delicate. That they are so easily hurt. As Laurie Halse Anderson herself said, when asked what questions she gets that shock her:
"I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped. The first dozen times I heard this, I was horrified. But I heard it over and over again. I realized that many young men are not being taught the impact that sexual assault has on a woman. They are inundated by sexual imagery in the media, and often come to the (incorrect) conclusion that having sex is not a big deal. This, no doubt, is why the number of sexual assaults is so high."