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."
Great book! Once I started I could not put it down and finished it in a day. Warning, there is a pretty graphic description of the author's rape in the beginning, which is disturbing, but necessary to set the stage for the rest of the book. Great read.
Amazing story of healing after rape. It was wonderful to read her description and openness about her family and they way people felt about her after the rape. It was so blunt in some sections that it was hard to put down. I thought it was really amazing.
