SOURCE: Dworkin, Andrea. “A Good Rape.” New Statesman 132, no. 4644 (30 June 2003): 51-2.

In the following review, Dworkin presents a detailed synopsis of the memoir Lucky, preferring it to Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones.

Alice Sebold is the author of the bestselling novel The Lovely Bones, in which a teenager who has been raped, murdered and dismembered narrates the story, from heaven, of those events and the aftermath. The narration is a chilling juxtaposition of innocence against evil. Why do people read it? Can a book be truthful about the rape and murder of girls and still be a popular phenomenon?

The novel is often accused of being sentimental, which some feel accounts for its success. It does have several happy endings: the serial killer falls down a ravine in freezing ice and snow and dies; the adulterous mother who has left the home, unable to bear the burden of...