Kampusch's grim tale would be compelling whatever the skill of the writer, but her memoir manages to be both a brave attempt to get across a message and a sad song about the bleakness of many lives. Later in her ordeal she has the optimism to keep some chipped veneer from the cellar so she might later help police prove this was the house of the perpetrator. Like Defoe's hero, although often in fear and pain, she is constantly planning ahead.Įarly on in the cellar, she remembers a wartime story about women who had avoided rape and so puts lemon peel on her skin to fake an infectious disease. While some commentators have seen Kampusch as Little Red Riding Hood, going missing in her scarlet jacket on her first solo walk to school and then held at the mercy of a man named Wolfgang, her memoir shows her to be more of a Crusoe, a resourceful soul cast adrift on an island of madness. Her autobiography is testament to the power of the imagination in the face of a most terrifying predicament. Once Kampusch had finally burst free, beaten and half-starved – aftereight years of unseen sunsets and sunrises, she had become something of a butterfly when it came to self-expression.
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