Although written in the first person singular voice of the girl, the note of the ghostwriter Lynne Barrett-Lee, makes it clear that most of the material came from copious notes scribbled by Chapman’s daughter Vanessa during endless hours of mother-daughter interviews. Lynne Barrett-Lee, to her credit, has converted it into the easy conversational prose of the teen narrator.
Sometime shortly before her fifth birthday, in the early 1950s, a girl was abducted from her home somewhere in rural Columbia or possibly northern Venezuela and, drugged and blindfolded, dumped in the jungle. No one came to rescue her but she survived, learning from a colony of monkeys that gradually befriended her. She also learned to communicate with them, and grew to think of herself as one of them. When she made contact with humans again, probably at least five years later, she had no name, no clothes, no language skills except body language, no sense of how old she was or how long she had lived in the jungle and almost no memory of her previous life as a human. She then went through a series of horrific experiences as a slave labourer locked in a brothel, then in a criminal gang house, and later still in a convent in the city of Cucuta. In between these stints she lived as an accomplished homeless street thief in that city. When the kindly neighbourhood woman who had delivered her to the convent continued to show affection for her after her escape, realizing the danger she was in and showing her the only affection she had any memory of except for that of the monkeys, they arranged together to get her to a safe family home in faraway Bogotá. This is where the story ends, but there are hints that a sequel will document her life from there to her present life as a Bradford, England housewife and mother of two.
This is by far the weirdest, most unlikely autobiography that I have ever read. It is so bizarre that some British so-called experts have claimed that it is a work of fiction rather than a true life story. But for me the details are so convincing that it seems even more unlikely that anyone could have imagined the developments she relates happening, though there may well be some faulty memories, the plague of all memoirs, and some embellishments woven in. And even if it were fiction, it would still be a helluva novel. But if anyone doubts the authenticity of the story, the matter-of fact interviews the very unassuming Chapman and her daughter give on Youtube should satisfy you that the basic facts are true. Still unconvinced? Watch the video of her as a an old woman gleefully, speedily, and seemingly effortlessly, like a monkey, climbing to the very top of the forest canopy, a feat no trained arborist would ever try.
I find it hard to believe that any sequel documenting Chapman’s later life or the 2014 TV film (I couldn’t find it) could possibly be as mesmerizing as this debut gem.
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Thanks, Vera and Sheila J.
The Passionate Reader 