This graphic novel reads like an incredibly sweet Pixar short. Told entirely through pictures, it tells the story of a park bench that experiences pretty much the same events day after day, a silent observer. Despite the lack of dialogue or narration, the various story lines are easy to follow and more than one is a little heartbreaking.

'Park Bench' by Christophe Chabouté explores the world around a common object: the park bench. Through a completely wordless graphic novel, we meet many different characters.

The book starts with a young boy carving his ardor for a girl in the bench. Then we see the bench, day to day, season to season, year to year. The commuter who passes it every day. The dog that relieves itself on the same leg. The homeless man who sleeps on it at night. And we witness the transformation and journey of these characters in relation to this bench. From an old couple who share a pastry to the city worker who paints over the graffiti.

This was an amazing graphic novel. Things play out panel after panel, and there are a variety of characters, and they all have their plot. The art was amazing and I loved how the artist played with the angle of the bench to keep things from being too static. I found a few of the stories very moving. This is a great graphic novel.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Gallery 13, Pocket Books, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Not for me but I can imagine there's a market for it.

...................................................

My full review can be found:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2160396550
https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/review-the-park-bench-by-christophe-chaboute/

A beautiful and poignant wordless graphic novel that immediately took me away. A brilliant piece of work, it is unmissable.

With the only words in “Park Bench” being book titles and scribbles on the bench, it is the purest form of a graphic novel. I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful this book is. No words could do it justice. I laughed and I cried and I felt despair for the human race and hope for the human race and etc. I can’t recommend this enough. It is truly something you will never forget. If only there were 100 star ratings.

I could not get this one to download properly, thus I did not get the chance to read it, unfortunately.

Park Bench is one of the most brilliant silent comics I’ve read. For those that are unfamiliar with the term “silent comics,” it’s the term the industry came up for a comic with no dialogue or narration. The artwork tells the story without any support, and you might think that it’s easy to do. It is not; it is one of the things a lot of creators fail at because it’s all about the panels and the pacing.

Park Bench is about a park bench. It starts with a little boy carving “I heart you” on the bench, and from there it develops a cast of characters that develop routines around the park bench. From the dog that pees on a particular leg, to the homeless man and his cop counterpart. There are so many characters that you see over and over as the story spans years. During all this time the bench is used and abused and rarely praised.

What Chabouté captures so well is the interconnectivity of people. The gravitational pull that you feel at times when you run into the same people over and over without saying a word to them. This is that complete look at the picture, the things you don’t see, but someone staring at the same spot all day would easily be able to notice. At times its deeply moving as different people go through rough spots in their lives and other times humorous and uplifting. Chabouté captures the range of life that way because no one is just one emotion all the time.
Park Bench.png
The artwork is brilliant. It’s in all black and white with think lines. While it’s not heavy on the inks, the contrast of black and white works. It keeps the fine details from being blown out. Usually, I would complain about the excess white page, but here, it’s just perfect. I don’t know how else to describe the art other than perfect. The pacing, the panel choices, the emotion on the characters faces; it’s all spectacular storytelling. The characters all look different and capture many walks of life. There’s also a range of ages that the book covers, from babies, kids, to the elderly it feels as if ever range of life is represented.

Despite being a silent comic, Park Bench is not a quick read. The art is engaging, the characters are realistic and hold your attention. You want to stay with them and see what they’ll do while visiting this underappreciated bench.

Park Bench is one for the collection. This is a book I could easily read over and over which just goes to show the level of mastery that Chabouté has when it comes to storytelling. If you’re a fan of comics, hell if you’re an indie creator, this is a master class on storytelling that everyone should read.

“The Park Bench” es un tebeo que puede resultar tan apasionante como aburrido. Un pasa páginas donde lo importante no es el propio banco del parque, sino todo que sucede en las vidas de alrededor: el paso del tiempo, las decisiones complicadas, las noticias alegres, las triste, etc.

En menos de una hora que calculo se tarda en leer el tomo habremos vivido una larga temporada junto a este banco. La historia comienza con una joven pareja dejando su marca de amor. Una marca que acompañara al banco a lo largo de toda la historia. Veremos al trabajador que cada mañana pasa por delante sin ni siquiera mirarlo por un segundo. El pobre que lo utiliza cada noche para poder tener una superficie donde dormir mientras la policia hace lo imposible por evitarlo. O aquella mujer que recibe la noticia de su embarazo leyendo el sobre con la noticia mientras descasa en este anodino pero imprescindible objeto.

Habrá quien le guste y habrá a quien le aburra. Todo vale en una historia que hace pensar, soñar, sufrir y, en definitiva, ver ese banco que dejamos a un lado mientras vamos corriendo al trabajo de otra manera a como lo hacíamos hasta ahora.

Wow. Just … wow.

Say you're a park bench. A nice, traditional, roomy seat – big enough for two, or three, or four if you're friendly, shaded by a tree in a park. Every day dozens of people go by – you see joggers taking a favorite route, or people on their way to work. Some pause to tie a shoe or take a call or catch their breath – and there's that one bloody dog … And then there are the regulars, who come to enjoy the weather and maybe read or watch people go by – or stretch out on you to sleep, since they have nowhere else to go. Sun and rain and snow and starlight, through the four seasons, until …

The saying about pictures and thousands of words is a cliché – but it's a cliché for a reason. As someone who has handled pencils, pens, and brushes, I know how tiny the difference is between a line that evokes an emotion or plays its part in a story, and a line that is … just a line. Christophe Chabouté is French – but that's the other cliché about art, isn't it? It's universal. I didn't have to blow the dust off my high school language course, because without a word a very clear and achingly beautiful story is conveyed – a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, a climax, a denouement – and an epilogue. Sometimes funny, occasionally heart-rending… the only small weakness I can think of in the book is that one of the threads of the story seemed far too predictable – I had a terrible feeling I knew what would happen. And I was right. And it hurt.

I love this book. In fact, I think I'll go and start it over again.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

Chabouté has been around for some time, but he is new to me. I've really grown to love graphic memoirs and novels, so when Gallery 13 offered Park Bench for early review, it was happy to accept.

Chabouté is French, though even if this narrative had any French in it, it wouldn't be a barrier. It's the profile of a lone park bench, literally and figuratively, and the entire timeline is told through images. Through their relationship with the bench, we follow the lives of several people, some briefly, some over the course of years.

It's a given that when the elderly couple who bring sweet treats to share on the bench first show up, that the trauma of one of them not being there at some point is looming, but the way that Chabouté eventually executes this is distinctive and more emotional that expected (particularly because you can see it coming).

I loved how some of the bench's visitors were sometimes inferred not by their presence on the page, but rather by their affect on the bench during their absence. There's humor as well as melancholy; the poor woman in the fifth image above is confused and bewildered every time she visits the bench.

Lovely, with gorgeous illustrations and perfect for kicking off autumn.

Park Bench will be released this Tuesday, September 19th. Please be aware that because my copy was an advanced reader's copy, there's always the possibility that the images I've provided above could change. It's difficult to provide an early review for a book that is purely illustrations without illustrations, particularly when they're so fantastic.

At first, I wasn’t sure that I was going to like this. It is strictly images and roughly drawn ones without any words. However, as you turn each page the stories that are told are magnificent. You see the lives lived and only constant is this one park bench. I absolutely love this graphic novel and the more I think about it, the sweeter the story is.

Peaceful and beautiful, this wordless graphic novel is told in black and white illustrations and shows the life of a park bench and all the people that come across it. I didn't think I could care this much about a bench or characters that have no names and don't speak.

Who knew that a wordless graphic novel about a park bench was going to break my heart and, almost immediately, uplift it.

This was a nice slice-of-life story that was slices of many many lives. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending.

I mean... from an artistic point of view, I get it, but this was not for me at all.

The Park Bench is literally 300-something pages of focusing on a park bench while people of all walks of life come and go - some sitting on it, some walking past it, some interacting with one another. When interactions do occur, there is no text dialogue whatsoever, so we have no idea what is happening or why.

I felt like this is one of those graphic novels that was built just for the ~artistic aesthetic~, and while that is great for a certain audience, I'm not part of that group, sadly.

This is such a beautiful book. I have read a few graphic novels that were completely without dialogue, but I can't remember one of them affecting me in the way this one did. I became absorbed to the point that I forgot there were no words. Unwritten conversations came alive in my mind, and I felt myself grow to know the people frequenting the area of the park bench. By the time I finished this book, I was nostalgic for a place I've never been.

A simplistic comic with no words but all of the emotions. Filter through the seasons and different lives all from the perspective of a homely park bench.

At first look this Comic Novel might seem a repetition of the same drawing with a few alteration.
A closer look, and life begins to move. The bench stands as an observer of our everyday life. As we walk past a same route day in, day out we overlook what surrounds us.
I loved the ending, very clever.