Post Entry #2: In Suits and Ties with Pens onto Their Papers

As I’m reading through the memoir, I can’t help to notice that this is similar to one of those movies always promoted for the Lifetime channel; it’s focused around women, involves violence caused by a man, and is a depressing, yet serious topic. Now, this doesn’t make the memoir bad, just relatable towards readers, female readers in particular. Coincidentally, my mother had to endure a legal process similar to what Alice dealt within the book after she broke her wrist.

On the day before my tenth birthday, I went ice skating with my mother, only for her to fall on the ice because of a rambunctious child recklessly speeding around the rink. She was sent to the hospital, and now has limited function of her right wrist. What makes the situation worse is that no employee tried to help my mother after her fall. She wanted compensation for it, causing a legal battle. She had to endure the physical suffering of a broken wrist, but also internalize the idea that she could never play the piano again like she used to before the accident. Like Alice, she felt helpless when she was lying on the ground, vulnerable to harm.

As Alice is trying the rapist, a fellow classmate of hers, for rape, she undergoes questioning from the defense attorney representing him. The attorney asks many questions with a slightly snobby and belligerent attitude. Alice, angered by the man, is upset at the fact she has to endure this when she greatly suffered from the ramifications of his actions. She’s being asked about how poor her vision is in the night and other vaguely relevant questions in order to prove the rapist’s innocence. This specific passage reminded me of when the defense lawyer questioned my family; he tried to use every bit of reasoning to justify why the ice skating company shouldn’t settle for my mothers injury. It wasn’t fair to me, nor the rest of my family that my mother had to undergo a gratuitous amount of pain because of the employees’ negligence. I still remember the awkwardness of sitting in the court room, discussing the whole procedure as a woman typed everything down on a laptop.

Because I can relate to certain aspects of the book, like the legal process, along with the general idea rape, I feel that the reader could easily connect to Lucky more easily than initially perceived. Either way, I bet my mom would enjoy Alice Sebolds work as well.