Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Eight true crime books that combine the personal & the literary

Lisa Levy is a columnist and contributing editor at LitHub and CrimeReads.

At CrimeReads she tagged eight true crime books that combine the personal and the literary, including:
Alice Sebold, Lucky (Scribner)

Lucky is one of the most uncomfortable books I’ve ever read, which I mean as the highest compliment. Sebold’s account of her stranger rape during her freshman year at Syracuse University is both clinical and deeply felt: we follow her from the act itself through the exam at the hospital and the questioning by the police. We are with her as she has to tell her family and friends what has happened to her and reckon with their befuddlement and discomfort. We accompany her when she sees her attacker on campus and reports it to the police, and, perhaps most devastatingly, we are with her at the trial when she has to narrate the incident all over again. All the while the title echoes in the reader’s head: yes, Sebold has the privilege of being able to confront her attacker and see justice done, but how could being raped ever be lucky?
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue