It is one of those books you can't say you liked or enjoyed because of the subject matter, but you can still appreciate the careful thought and care the author took to maintain her integrity while detailing her own violent rape.
There was a part in the book when her father says that if the horrible "thing" had to happen at all, he was glad it had happened to her, Alice, instead of her sister, because she was the stronger of the two and if either of them were to pull through such an ordeal, it would be her.
Of course it's a shitty thing to say, let alone think and it was even more callous of him to have admitted it aloud. But Alice understood because she knew her family and she was living "it" everyday, she understood that he didn't mean it the way it sounded, that sometimes some people are better at surviving than others.
Marcus Aurelius said that "everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so." Obviously this is an oversimplification, because it would be naive to believe that this can be applied to every experience that any person will ever live.
I agree to an extent, though, with exceptions of course. Every individual has their own way of doing things, from banal daily morning rituals to the more questionable measures they take "just to get by". And being an individual, it gives one the license to hold whatever beliefs one chooses to hold. It also gives one the leeway to start sentences with the word "and".
I believe that life has this uncanny way of balancing out, and those people who argue that life is unfair or those who are too quick to regret, are the ones who keep their eyes shut to all the signs around them. There is never a "regular" situation where you are truly left with no way out. Regular here will be taken to mean situations that do not include the mob or unusual circumstances.
When you feel like you've hit a brick wall or a dead end, try to step outside yourself for 2 minutes to gain some perspective and then analyse the situation, critically. You will find that there were so many chances to change your mind, so many opportunities to go a different way.
And if you've exhausted all avenues and done the very best you can possibly do, nobody can justifiably fault you. All those people who keep up the fight to the very end ought to be commended, because boy, is it hard to stay positive when all you really want to do is go to sleep until it's all over.
A positive mind has won far larger battles than any physical strength ever could.
