by Shelley Civkin Richmond Public Library

A world of hell and hope

There is nothing quite so brutal as rape. Alice Sebold, author of the novel The Lovely Bones, has recently written a memoir about her own sexual assault, called Lucky. I thought, How could someone who was raped, call her memoir Lucky? Well, the “lucky” of the title refers to what the police had called Alice, in comparison to a girl who got raped and murdered in the same spot as Alice. Some luck!

It’s true, rape is difficult stuff to read about. In fact, much of the detail here will be too visceral and graphic for squeamish readers. But Sebold is such a miraculously talented writer that I couldn’t tear myself away from the book. She is very up-front and literal in her telling of what happened to her as an 18-year old college freshman who was beaten and raped in a tunnel in a park near campus.

In an effort not to become “defined by the rape”, and wanting desperately for people to talk about rape and listen to victims of rape, Alice bares her soul and the very personal experiences that turned her into a survivor. I will never forget her words: “You save yourself or you remain unsaved.” This realization and acceptance that nobody and nothing can help you overcome trauma but your own determination and strong will, is inspirational. As far as Alice is concerned, memory was the key to her survival. She says: “…memory could save, …it had power…[and] it was often the only recourse of the powerless, the oppressed, or the brutalized.”

In the aftermath of her rape, Alice and her family were all left “clinging to the wreckage”. Their lives would never be the same again and their futures were a process of adjustment, understanding and acceptance. At one point Alice writes: “They had no idea, because I had not told them, what had happened to me in that tunnel - what the particulars were…I knew what had happened. But can you speak those sentences to the people you love? That question continues to haunt me. After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.”

Alice Sebold is nothing, if not brave. She loathes pity and “wished to slam-dunk the fact that no one needed to worry about this tough customer”. There’s no way she was going to candy-coat the rape and she certainly wasn’t going to let the rapist off the hook. Alice was hell bent on justice. She says: “I’ve always hated it in movies and plays, the woman who is ripped open by violence and then asked to parcel out redemption for the rest of her life.”

Alice finishes off her story acknowledging her traumatic past and her desire to continue showing up for life. She admits she lives in a world “where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand.” Emotional stuff, this -- make sure you read it.

Shelley J. Civkin is the head of the Readers' Advisory Department at the Richmond Public Library. For other popular reading suggestions, check out Richmond Public Library's Web site at www.yourlibrary.ca/goodbooks .