3.096 Days by Natascha Kampusch

Title: 3.096 Days

Author: Natascha Kampusch

Publisher: Viking

Rating /

Summary:

On 2 March 1998 ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch was snatched off the street by a stranger and bundled into a white van. Hours later she found herself in a dark cellar, wrapped in a blanket. When she emerged eight years later, her childhood had gone. In "3,096 Days" Natascha tells her incredible story for the first time: her difficult childhood, what exactly happened on the day of her abduction, her imprisonment in a five-square-metre dungeon, and the mental and physical abuse she suffered from her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil. "3,096 Days" is ultimately a story about the triumph of the human spirit. It describes how, in a situation of almost unbearable hopelessness, she slowly learned how to manipulate her captor. And how, against inconceivable odds, she managed to escape unbroken.

(Goodreads)

My review:

Can we really judge someone else's story? When it comes to fiction, there aren't any consequences but when it comes to a true and personal story, wouldn't judging equals to fictionalizing their real life and story? 

I didn't put any rating because it's impossible to rate such a story. One can't give a rating to the horrors Natascha has been through. We can react in many ways but rating those long years of captivity... I couldn't do it.

It's a really tough book to read. The first chapter doesn't give that vibe since Natascha only tells us how her life was in her childhood, the atmosphere in which she grew up. But soon enough, the tone changes.

For someone looking from the outside, it's easy to tell ourselves that it would have been different for us. Natascha destroys those pretensions real fast. When she was abducted, she was only a child and, looking back now, she perfectly showed the psychological games what were played in the very first days of the captivity.

Even I who is quite used to crime series and other thrillers and such (I once wanted to become a criminologist so...), seeing the case from the victim's point of view has been hard. If her story wasn't that hard, it's a book I could have read in a matter of hours. But each and every chapter is so heavy on the mind, so tough... I could only read one chapter a day.

This book opens your eyes on those pretensions we have while facing life. The "it only happens to others"'s only purpose is to reassure us because we know very well it can happen to us and we can't prevent it. That's why I would not recommend this book to anyone. One must be really aware before starting to read this.