Natascha's story

Allan Hall and Michael Leidig (Hodder and Stoughton, £12.99)

Natascha Kampusch broke out of her Austrian prison in August and this book was published last month. That gives you some idea of the enormous media interest in her story.

The authors have pieced together the known facts in a professional way, but they are obviously frustrated because they would like to know more, and Natascha won't tell them.

This young girl, still only 18, has survived an ordeal we can barely imagine. Her home life was unhappy: one commentator says that she did not go to pieces "because she already knew that people could be nasty; it wasn't a shock".

In the end, she escaped because she was more intelligent than the man who kidnapped her, but she doesn't want to go back to her mother, or become a celebrity.

What shocks me most in all this is not that a lone psychopath snatched a child but that, afterwards, hundreds of apparently normal people sent her hate-mail, raised money in her name and kept it, speculated in public about her character. She now has to cope with those people as well as her memories.

"The authors will be in the UK on publication and available for interview," we are told. I don't think they should be interviewed. Natascha needs peace and privacy, and although many of us will find this book deeply interesting (we're all guilty), it is high time to leave her alone.