Book description
In a memoir hailed for its searing candour 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.' 'A rueful, razor-sharp memoir . . .
Sebold tells what it's like to go through a particular kind of nightmare
in order to tell what it's like - slowly, bumpily, triumphantly - to
heal' Sarah Kerr, Vogue
