Jungle
Our talented book reviewer Becky has been reading Jungle, a harrowing true story of adventure, danger and survival.
If you’ve read the book and would like to submit your own review then please do so HERE
Review By Becky Hinshelwood
I’m reading this book as I say à bientôt et bon voyage to my baby sister as she confidently leaps aboard a plane to re-commence her travelling for another year. She’s a seasoned nomad and has always returned in one piece, but even so this true story puts me on edge. Our narrator, Yossi Ghinsberg, who survived alone – just – in the Bolivian jungle for three weeks in 1981 is a far cry from my own girl who I periodically see off and welcome home from her global adventures to the likes of Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
My very own traveller is preoccupied with culture and surrounds herself with people. Yossi, in contrast, is a self confessed adventurer who searches for that extra level of experience within the wilderness of the jungle that will lift his understanding beyond other backpacking escapades. The fact is, however, that the real danger is posed less by the jungle itself than by the people that you may meet. The fatal darkness lies in humanity rather than in nature.
This book initially reads like a Lonely Planet guide – all secret markets and local culture. Promises of indigenous settlements, distant beaches and banana groves. Yossi draws you into the desire of the backpacker to discover these tantalising delights. We know that one of the key characters in whom Yossi puts his faith is untrustworthy, and yet we follow him along with our narrator. This being a true story, our people are full of contradictions.
Survival is intrinsically linked with the spirituality which surrounds the book and is rooted in Yossi’s lucky charm, his Uncle Nissim’s book. This ethereal atmosphere is appropriate to the jungle setting, beyond and somehow superior to humanity itself. Yossi’s descent into fantasy – his final survival mechanism, is representative of a guardian angel. I felt a link between the imaginary world into which Yossi interloped in order to keep himself mentally afloat, and the domain of the miraculous each time that his life was spared. As a pragmatist and realist, I can understand the power of positive thought, unwavering belief and the primal drive for survival. To his benefit, Yossi is clearly a master of all of these things.
The challenge in this book is the decision to relate so much of the story in dialogue. A large proportion of the readers won’t be travellers, even less so people with experience of Bolivia. So there is a lot that needs explanation, and it is absolutely required in order to make sense of the events that unfold. To explain these practical things by dropping them into speech can make the words feel affected and distant. At the same time, though, I can understand why someone who has miraculously survived the events that this book retells would need to remain at least partly distant. No matter how historic the events, they must remain painful and my sympathies lay consistently with Yossi throughout.
Yossi recounts detailed events from his survival experience, such as frightening off a jaguar and surviving the ferocious river, which are real nail biters. It is not until the final sequence of events, however, that the true horror of the wilderness really unleashes itself on our hero. There are no spoilers since we all know that he lived to tell the tale, but the human condition that he descended to whilst remaining alive is remarkable. As a non-traveller, I simply cannot imagine looking at a map of a jungle river and marking my route along it. I clearly admire the people who actually did and do it to this day, but I cannot relate to that desire. In this way I read this book from the perspective of the family, whose experience we hear briefly about and whose emotion I found coloured my reading and made it so incredibly heart wrenching.
Next year, this story is to be re-told as a movie starring our own beloved Harry Potter (sorry Daniel, you’re obviously so much more). I have no doubt that this will make a fantastic movie, albeit one during which I will spend a considerable proportion hiding behind a cushion!
If this review has inspired you to read Jungle, then you can buy your copy HERE for £7.36 (RRP £9.99) + free delivery.