25 Sep / The Third Population by Aurélien Ducoudray, illustrated by Jeff Pourquié, translated by Kendra Boileau [in Booklist]
The opening is undoubtedly jarring: in a father/son conversation about an upcoming work trip, author Aurélien Ducoudray explains he’s going “[t]o a place where crazy people live.” Despite the initially shocking language (most likely not lost in translation by Penn State University Press’s editor-in-chief Kendra Boileau), the French import is a warm, inclusive exploration of La Chesnaie, a groundbreaking clinic founded in 1956 that espouses an institutional psychotherapy which encourages empathic, engaged treatment without walls.
With creative partner/artist Jeff Pourquié in tow, Ducoudray arrives to find “everyone seems normal. Are you sure this is a psychiatric institution?” The open campus looks “like a Jewish settlement in the West Bank,” Ducoudray observes, “[w]ith a touch of American hippy commune,” Pourquié adds.
Pourquié’s detailed documentarian style manifests in mostly muted, two-color shaded pages, which get affectingly interrupted by electrifying color when emotions feel most intense. Guided by caregivers, administrators, but mostly the patients, the observant duo turn their initial announcement of “We’re here to make a comic about Chesnaie” into a surprisingly participatory, warmly individualized, even laugh-out-loud, record of mental illness.
Review: “Graphic Novels,” Booklist, September 1, 2020
Readers: Adult
Published: 2020