The Park Bench is full of quiet, revealing, and intimate glances into everyday moments, capturing clever little details in the background. Including romantic couples both young and old, gossiping, people watching, and so much more. This silent graphic novel speaks volumes.
Marketing his English-language debut, The Park Bench is Chabouté’s beautiful and acclaimed story of a park bench and the lives it witnesses. At once intimate and universal, it is one of the most moving books you could hope to come across.
From its creation to its witness to the fresh ardor of lovers, the drudgery of businessmen, the various hopes of the many who enter its orbit, the park bench weathers all seasons. Strangers meet at it for the first time. Paramours carve their initials into it. Old friends sit and chat upon it for hours. Others ignore the bench, or (attempt to) sleep on it at night, or simply anchor themselves on it and absorb the ebb and flow of the area and its people.
I’ve had my eyes on this particular graphic novel for ages, so when it finally arrived in the mail I took my sweet time perusing the book. Letting the story sit with me for a while was certainly a wise way to go about Chabouté’s work. Though, I do have to say that for that second half I couldn’t help but read through it in a whirlwind. For anyone who loves to be deeply involved in their own thoughts, The Park Bench (both the book and the object) is a must.
The above is a prime example of tiny details coming together to create a bigger picture.
No words need to describe how the above page is utterly heartbreaking.
ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Publication Date: July 6th, 2017
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