Hostage by Guy Delisle

It was in the early morning hours of July 2 that I was kidnapped. I had been working for three months in the town of Nazran, in Ingushetia, a small Russian republic west of Chechnya. I was responsible for the  finances and administration of a medical N60 established in the North Caucasus. It was my first job in the humanitarian sector.

So begins the story of Christian Andre, a French humanitarian worker whisked away in the middle of the night by Chechen rebels, taken to an unknown location and chained to a radiator. Initially he assumes he’s been kidnapped because he’s the organization’s treasurer, the only person with a key to the safe in his house; as the days, weeks, and months go by, it becomes clear that they don’t know about the safe at all--he’s been held for ransom. As told to graphic journalist Guy Delisle, Hostage recounts his experience.

Graphic novels provide unique presentational opportunities. Anything goes and a cartoonist with some time can draw a story as large-scale as any blockbuster, be it a superhero apocalypse, a sprawling period piece, cosmic horror, whatever. But the elevator pitch for Hostage sounds like a poor fit. Most of it takes place in one room, with one character. There’s very little dialogue, since Christian can’t understand or communicate with his captors. Many of the panels recur over and over, as Christian studies his feet, tries to escape the handcuffs, sleeps in uncomfortable positions, counts the days, speculates on when and if he’ll be released. He’s moved to a few different locations, but none of them are much more visually complex. Aside from the ten or so pages where he entertains himself by replaying military history in his head, Hostage is a long, repetitious nightmare.

Thankfully, it all works perfectly. Comics excel at working with time, able to stretch a single second over pages and pages or elide years in the gutter between panels. They can also, crucially, communicate repetition with drawings instead of prose, which means that the reader who tires of being imprisoned with Christian can speed quickly through the book, but for me, I found the repetitive rhythms of the days drew me in, affecting a real sense of melancholy or hopelessness where a prose presentation might instead have brought boredom and irritation.

In the last 40 pages or so, the story picks up as Christian manages to escape(!) when his captors forget to lock his door when they leave. With the help of a family he reluctantly trusts, he eventually makes it back, safe and sound. And according to the afterword, he returned to continue his humanitarian work a year later. Hostage is an affecting work, a masterful use of the form, and I’m going to be seeking out more of Delisle’s work.

Marley and Me by Josh Grogan

"A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with an unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple thing--a walk in the wood, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taugh me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty."

While this may not be the best way to judge character, I feel that men that love dogs are generally trustworthy. After all, any good dog owner has to value simple companionship and have a lot of patience. When I met Jamie (the significant other) at the beach and we started talking about our favorite books, he cited Marley and Me as one of his. I had not heard of the book and assumed it was about Bob Marley (who the dog in the book is named after). His correcting me on the subject matter led into a story about the love of his life--a boxer named Tyson. This is when I decided that Jamie was probably a pretty good guy. After we got back from the beach, Jamie gifted me the book that we had talked about as a going away present when I headed back to Boone for school.

Grogan, who is a journalist by profession, writes in a way that I can see appealing to a broad audience, both book lovers and the book shy alike. I feel like 300 pages about man and his best friend would be too much for anyone, however, regardless of the quality of writing. That's exactly what made Marley and Me an appealing read... it wasn't just about Marley, though he certainly played an important role. The book is about a dog, but it's also about forming a new family, miscarriage, postpartum depression, the love between Grogan and his wife, and what happens when crime becomes personal. Of course, there are plenty of light hearted moments that the book touches on as well--the day Grogan decided to move his family across the country on a whim so that he could see what following a dream felt like, how children from Florida react to their first snow, and the day Grogan became a stage dad for Marley on the movie set of The Last Home Run. When Jamie told me that the book would make me laugh and it would make me cry, I told him he was full of it. In the end, he was right. I bawled.

The novel is suppose to be about "life and love with the world's worst dog." I don't know that Marley is the world's worst, but I don't know if I'd want him for a pet, regardless of all of his more endearing qualities. Marley flunked out of obedience school (as did my dog Jazz, more or less, but I was 9 when I took her so that might be a factor). He had a cage that he managed to work his way out of that was so impregnable looking that Grogan named it Alcatraz. Marley clawed and bit his way through hundreds of dollars worth of drywall not once but every time it stormed. You get the picture.

This book took me all semester to read. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it, because clearly, I did. Grogan just didn't pull me in quite enough to make me work him into my schedule as often as I made time for my required class reading, I guess. My time with Marley was squeezed in between classes and before work meetings more than it was enjoyed in lengthy sittings.

While I haven't seen the movie based on the book as it hasn't been released yet, I do have to say that whoever did the casting made very different decisions than I would have (not that anybody asked me). Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson are nowhere near the Josh and Lisa that live in my head.