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A review by mschlat
Hostage by Guy Delisle
4.0
I'm familiar with Delisle's work in two very different genres: his travelogues (e.g., the excellent [b:Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City|13104040|Jerusalem Chronicles from the Holy City|Guy Delisle|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347396940s/13104040.jpg|18201569]) and his humor writing (through the bad parenting series). This is a completely different type of work.
Delisle is telling the story of Christopher André, an NGO worker taken hostage in Chechnya in 1997. And this is André's story --- every panel is told from his perspective. There's little to no context given about the work he was doing, why his captors did what they did, or what his NGO did to try and get him back. Much of the book (and almost all of the beginning of the book) is devoted to documenting André lying in a room, chained to an object. There are a few flights of fancy and several passages detailing André's mental recreations of historical military battles (an obvious pastime of his), but other than that, Delisle is spending all of the pages on small dark oppressive spaces.
When I started the work, I was unsure how much I liked it, partly due to the somewhat monotonous nature described above. But (without spoiling it) I will say that the payoff is worth it. It's not my favorite Delisle work and its sparseness can be distancing, but I can see returning to this work for a reread many times.
Delisle is telling the story of Christopher André, an NGO worker taken hostage in Chechnya in 1997. And this is André's story --- every panel is told from his perspective. There's little to no context given about the work he was doing, why his captors did what they did, or what his NGO did to try and get him back. Much of the book (and almost all of the beginning of the book) is devoted to documenting André lying in a room, chained to an object. There are a few flights of fancy and several passages detailing André's mental recreations of historical military battles (an obvious pastime of his), but other than that, Delisle is spending all of the pages on small dark oppressive spaces.
When I started the work, I was unsure how much I liked it, partly due to the somewhat monotonous nature described above. But (without spoiling it) I will say that the payoff is worth it. It's not my favorite Delisle work and its sparseness can be distancing, but I can see returning to this work for a reread many times.