September 11, 2001: The Day the World Changed Forever - Baptiste Bouthier - ★★★.½

AUTHOR: Baptiste Bouthier

ILLUSTRATOR: Héloïse Chochois

GENRE: Graphic Memoir

PUBLICATION DATE: August 20, 2021

RATING: 3.5 stars

I was in two minds about whether to go for this book or not. I have read two fabulous books on this topic just last year and I am old enough to know what exactly happened on 9/11. But having the story told in graphic format was a new appeal and so I decided to give this a try. The result? Mixed feelings.

Every adult already knows the details of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Whether you are a US citizen or not, there is no way you could have forgotten the image of the plane smashing into the two towers of the WTC. No matter what nationality you belong to, your life has changed since 9/11/2001, even if you weren’t alive that day. And this graphic novel shows you exactly how!

This book presents the events that day in two perspectives: the actual unfolding of the attacks in New York, and the reactions of the French citizens who were watching it on their TV sets. This happens over the first one-third of the book. The rest of the 150-odd page book depicts the aftermath at a global scale: the implementation of the Vigipirate plan in France, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the increased vigilance by the NSA as revealed by Snowden, the high security surveillance in airports that exists to date… This was more interesting to me as it contained a perspective that 9/11 books don’t usually cover. The overall story is written as a French woman’s reminiscences as she is aboard a plane to New York in 2021 and pondering over the attacks that took place when she was a teenager.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book. I just kept my fingers crossed that it wouldn’t try to milk out the tragedy or portray it insensitively. Thankfully, neither happens. For those of us who have never seen the inside of the towers, seeing a visualised depiction of the structure of the buildings makes it easier to see the dilemma faced by the people inside and the rescue teams outside.

What I didn’t like was how the story doesn’t go in a chronological order. While it begins in the present, it moves to 2001 within a few pages. And within this 2001 time frame, it keeps going back and forth. For instance, you have the towers collapsing in a panel and the next page goes to a few minutes before the collapse. Or you have the reaction of the French on Sept 12th and then again the narrative moves to Sept. 11th in the US. A sequential narrative would have worked better.

The illustrations are quite simple and with dullish colours. The font is quite stark. Both these points help in focussing on the story rather than being distracted by the vibrancy of the panels.

I think that this book would be a good way for YA readers to know the extent of the attacks and how our world as we knew it changed. This year will mark twenty years since these attacks, and if you don’t know what happened that day, you really ought to. After all, it is one of the few historical events that impacted the entire world. However, the presentation is much too simplistic for adult readers and there are too many jumps in the timeline for a proper informative experience. There are far better adult books that cover the 9/11 attacks in astounding detail. So unless you prefer a graphic novel to a nonfiction book OR unless you want to know more about the repercussions of the attacks than the attacks themselves, I wouldn’t suggest this book to you.

(Adult readers might like to try “The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11” by Garrett M. Graff. My review HERE. But mind you, this is a gut-wrenching read.)

Thank you to NetGalley and Europe Comics for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.