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Sukey's Favorite

Lucky
By Alice Sebold
Simon & Schuster Audio, cassette, $35
9.5 hours, ISBN 0743529782

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After she had been raped and beaten, a policeman told Alice Sebold that she was lucky to be alive to tell the tale—the previous victim had been raped, murdered and dismembered. And tell the tale she does in Lucky, her unflinching, unflinchingly read memoir of her experiences before, during and after the brutal ordeal. Alice was a freshman at Syracuse when she was attacked. She identified her attacker the next year and successfully testified against him. The details are raw and harrowing. There was high drama in that horror, yet Sebold describes it all without false emotion, without self-pity and with the simple clarity of a witness to the terrible things one human can do to another. Lucky was published three years before her hugely successful first novel The Lovely Bones, but I found the memoir far more compelling, more affecting in its treatment of dark material and of what actually happens to victims and their families. This is real life where closure and healing come slowly, if at all. It's not always an easy listen, but do.

Too much, not enough

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

To put it mildly, Augusten Burroughs had a very unorthodox upbringing. To be blunt, it was a bizarre, weird walk on the wild side. If Running With Scissors were a novel, you'd probably say, "oh, come on, that's too much." But this surprising bestseller is a memoir, a kid's-eye-view of lives spiraling out of control. Augusten's father retreated from the family scene early, leaving him with his flamboyantly unstable mother who modeled herself on Anne Sexton. Enter Dr. Finch, mama's psychiatrist, madder than a hatter and definitely detrimental to the mental health of all under his care and under his roof. Augusten, unfortunately, was sent to live under that roof in unsupervised squalor—physical, mental and sexual. There's a dusting of David Sedaris in Burrough's style, a laughing-through-your-tears candor that's as appealing as the situations are appalling. A caveat to listeners—there are X-rated scenes throughout.


A portrait of sisters' corresponding lives

In 1934, Nora left the drab, insular Ontario village she was born in to seek her fortune in New York City as a radio actress. Her older sister, Clara, stayed at home. With the candor of restrained memoir, gifted Canadian author Richard B. Wright evokes the next four years of their lives through the letters they exchanged and Clara's intimate diary in Clara Callan. Wright etches these portraits with deft strokes—Nora, pretty and effervescent, Clara, guarded and contemplative. But both sisters stumbled on the social strictures of that "low, dishonest decade," as they yearned for love and companionship. Nora succeeded in her minor career, fluttering from man to man; Clara fell into an unexpected affair with a married man and her unassuming life was charged forever with turbulence and stigma. Anne Twomey and Joanna Adler read in alternating voices that underscore this quietly compelling story.


Tolkien tries a case

Don't worry, Frodo's creator hasn't come back to us in a new guise. The Tolkien here is J.R.R.'s grandson, Simon, a British barrister turned writer of courtroom drama, and Final Witness is his first foray into this popular genre. Lady Anne Robinson has been murdered. Her only son, Thomas, saw it all happen as he hid in a secret bookcase. Daddy, Sir Peter, the ever-busy British minister of defense, was in London, as usual, with his gorgeous young green-eyed personal assistant, Greta. Can you see what's coming? Thomas accuses Greta, now the new Lady Robinson, of being behind the crime, and she's charged. Crisply narrated by the author, the whys and wherefores, the whos and whodunits, unfold in flashbacks and courtroom testimony that will have you guessing until that final witness takes the stand.


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