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Funeral of the Heart
Funeral of the Heart is Leah Hayes' stylistic tour-de-force and graphic novel debut, featuring a series of short stories by Hayes and illustrated entirely using the otherworldly medium of scratchboard. Hayes creates a world of unease and ambiguity populated by obsessive characters, forlorn animals, and mysterious, inanimate objects; odd occurrences, unnerving deaths and unconventional but genuine love bind these characters and their stories together. In "The Bathroom," a middle-aged couple discover a mysterious tunnel in their poolhouse after a neighbor's child accidentally drowns in their pool—leading to an immaculate bathroom and another drowning. In "The Needle," two sisters suffer the death of their grandmother as well as her possible resurrection at the hands of the woman with the needle.
The stories are hand lettered and juxtaposed against stark, highly stylized, graphically powerful, black and white images. Stories with titles like "The Bathroom," "The Needle," and "The Hair" sound innocuous, but they aren't fables that should be read to one's children—unless your children enjoy being made uneasy by beautiful things.
120 pages, Paperback
First published April 28, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 18, 2022
Funeral of the Heart is a collection of scratchboard short stories; not exactly comics, it’s more an illustrated (black and white) collection with more words than one usually finds in comics or picture books. I think I would call it horror, or sort of a mix of strange adult-oriented (?) fairy tales. Maybe myth best describes it, because magic infuses the collection.
In “The Bathroom” and older couple discover a tunnel in their poolhouse after a child drowns in their pool. More drownings follow! Just weird and unsettling.
In “The Needle” two sisters are around for the death of their grandmother;; soon after, and for the rest of their lives, they see the hospice nurse everywhere! Then, many years later, it appears there might be a kind of resurrection of the grandma by the nurse!
In “Whoreson” a man with hair all over his body also has two hearts:“He was very proud, and his hearts leaped in his chest.” He majored in econ; little surreal touches like this abound.
In “The Change, “at one time, Jeremy had been a wonderful person;” he was a waiter in an expensive restaurant where you got to choose the duck you wanted to eat. He was in love with Rose and he saved a female duck who slept between them. One day Rose got sick and was in a coma for a long time. He also got sick and, suspecting the duck for some reason, killed it, and felt better. He decided to be the cheap duck slaughterer in the restaurant, and one day, Rose woke up, but Jeremy was no longer interested in Rose, to her grief.
A happier one, you say? Two girls are born joined at the. . . . hair. Easy, right, but neither the mother nor the girls want the hair cut. When one decides to cut the hair and leave and live a long distance away, their hair grows back toward each other, yay!
Bizarre, original, strange, whimsical, beautifully rendered drawings. Wish there were more but it is much like any fairy tale book with many words and a few drawings. Initially I just thought they were surrealist horror, then I got in the groove of them more. They are more .. . . elliptical. . . than Thomas Ott's scratchboard horror stories, but still she's a talent to watch.
In “The Bathroom” and older couple discover a tunnel in their poolhouse after a child drowns in their pool. More drownings follow! Just weird and unsettling.
In “The Needle” two sisters are around for the death of their grandmother;; soon after, and for the rest of their lives, they see the hospice nurse everywhere! Then, many years later, it appears there might be a kind of resurrection of the grandma by the nurse!
In “Whoreson” a man with hair all over his body also has two hearts:“He was very proud, and his hearts leaped in his chest.” He majored in econ; little surreal touches like this abound.
In “The Change, “at one time, Jeremy had been a wonderful person;” he was a waiter in an expensive restaurant where you got to choose the duck you wanted to eat. He was in love with Rose and he saved a female duck who slept between them. One day Rose got sick and was in a coma for a long time. He also got sick and, suspecting the duck for some reason, killed it, and felt better. He decided to be the cheap duck slaughterer in the restaurant, and one day, Rose woke up, but Jeremy was no longer interested in Rose, to her grief.
A happier one, you say? Two girls are born joined at the. . . . hair. Easy, right, but neither the mother nor the girls want the hair cut. When one decides to cut the hair and leave and live a long distance away, their hair grows back toward each other, yay!
Bizarre, original, strange, whimsical, beautifully rendered drawings. Wish there were more but it is much like any fairy tale book with many words and a few drawings. Initially I just thought they were surrealist horror, then I got in the groove of them more. They are more .. . . elliptical. . . than Thomas Ott's scratchboard horror stories, but still she's a talent to watch.
September 20, 2011
This book is appalling. The drawings look like they were done by a five year old, the stories have no weight to them and are the meanderings of an inexperienced and clueless writer. To be honest, it's mostly just large, unsightly drawings of unrealistic humans with no expressions followed by entire pages or white writing on black. Hayes uses the scratchboard technique to tell her boring stories and it's only this that warrants mentioning Thomas Ott and Frans Masereel. Ott and Masereel are real talents, creating unforgettable images and crafting brilliant stories with their work. In fact even just mentioning the two in relation to Leah Hayes is doing them a disservice. If you're interested in comics and/or scratchboard stories/pictures done well then avoid this book completely and check out Thomas Ott and Frans Masereel. What were the publishers thinking?
May 2, 2008
You know... maybe at some point I'll post a full review peppered with generally archaic or otherwise obtuse words that I found in a thesaurus, but for now I will simply say this: have you ever worked with scratchboard before? It is a fucking nightmare. All hail Leah Hayes.
August 13, 2019
This is VERY original but in a way that got on my nerves more often than not. She tried too hard to make it odd and creepy for my taste and created a children's book strictly for adults that's about as sad and tragic as most will put up with.
Her stories and the ideas within are absolutely first rate weird and unparalleled so my problems were completely with the presentation.
She writes like a young child, I assume on purpose, which makes it a very unique but I found it stupid- it's like listening to a five year old that hasn't grasped how sentences are put together or what to pair versus separate. It makes you "see" things differently but leaves you blind to potential greatness that could have been achieved with an adult's narration.
The art is unique since the scratch-board lets the light in instead of darkening the page and she excels in portraying VERY creepy people. My problem is that she used it with the text as well which is written entirely at a sharp angle that annoyed me.
WARNING:
This is NOT a sequential art narrative- it's text OR still art from page to page BUT it's still a short read. Most pages are words so don't expect much art- the amount and placement of them changes drastically throughout which further unbalances it. Sure, that was probably her intent (with the slanted lettering as well) but I hated it.
Her stories and the ideas within are absolutely first rate weird and unparalleled so my problems were completely with the presentation.
She writes like a young child, I assume on purpose, which makes it a very unique but I found it stupid- it's like listening to a five year old that hasn't grasped how sentences are put together or what to pair versus separate. It makes you "see" things differently but leaves you blind to potential greatness that could have been achieved with an adult's narration.
The art is unique since the scratch-board lets the light in instead of darkening the page and she excels in portraying VERY creepy people. My problem is that she used it with the text as well which is written entirely at a sharp angle that annoyed me.
WARNING:
This is NOT a sequential art narrative- it's text OR still art from page to page BUT it's still a short read. Most pages are words so don't expect much art- the amount and placement of them changes drastically throughout which further unbalances it. Sure, that was probably her intent (with the slanted lettering as well) but I hated it.
September 24, 2018
I loved the style of the drawings and I liked the stories because they were dark, so it's enjoyable, but I found some of the ends of the stories very abrupt, but I like the initial idea for them.
August 6, 2008
This is one of the most moving and beautiful and frightening books I've ever read. It is so moving that I tried to tell/explain the story "The Hair" to my husband and I couldn't stop crying and by the end neither could he.
March 28, 2008
This debut graphic novel is a stylistic tour-de-force featuring a series of short stories illustrated entirely using the otherworldly medium of scratchboard.
January 11, 2013
Bad writing, great scratchboard illustrations. The short story "The Hair" stands above the rest though, it was a great closing.
Read
February 4, 2014Great, depressing stories, weird almost ugly artwork, the last story, the Hair, was far and away the best. A beautiful end to a great collection. Would recommend!
October 25, 2020
This was terrible.
August 13, 2024
If I could describe this book in two words, it would be sinister, and comforting, like an old memory of a place that no longer exists, nostalgic and eerie.
September 6, 2008
During this past spring, Leah Hayes's first graphic novel, Funeral of the Heart, was released to much fanfare. The press release for the graphic novel says she is "poised for greatness" and calls the book a "stylistic tour-de-force." But this hype is a bit of a stretch, and even calling this book a graphic novel is in every possible way a misnomer. It is actually a collection of five sparsely illustrated short stories which do have their shining moments but as a whole never really gel with one another.
Now certainly the book does have style; of this, there is no doubt. The layout of the book is wonderfully designed, and the illustrations themselves are quite lovely. The deceptively simple lines of the artwork match the style of the stories and amplify the emotions the stories evoke. Hayes's drawing can be creepy and build tension if the story calls for it, or it can change gears and create sympathy within the reader for the characters in the stories. There is an image of a funeral near the end of "The Needle" that is breathtaking, and an illustration of a hospital at the beginning of "The Hair" features brilliant use of negative space, akin to some of Frank Miller's best work on Sin City.
The cover to Funeral of the Heart by Leah Hayes. Click for a larger image.It's just a shame there aren't more of her drawings here. Of the total 120 pages in this book, less than 50 of those have any artwork on them. Of that total, five are merely title pages for each story, and several of the remaining images are mere illustrations that do not do anything to help tell the story. Beyond that, there are several non sequitur illustrations which have little to do with the content of the stories they are in. For example, at the beginning of "The Needle," the text describes how two sisters have rushed to their grandmother's deathbed while the illustration depicts people lounging on a beach.
And sadly, most of the style the book has is without substance. Her stories are written in a very childlike way and in a tone similar to that of magic realism, but this attempt at imbuing her work with a dreamlike quality often falls flat. At best, as in the first story "The Bathroom," it comes across as vaguely self-important, akin to the kind of writing you might find in a college literary journal. At worst, it is incredibly pretentious and utterly nonsensical, as can be seen in the second story of the collection, "Whoreson." This tale centers on a man who is covered with hair, becomes a famous writer, has a son who hates him because of his appearance, and whose death causes the waters neighboring the town to fill with fish.
The highlights of this book are the third story "The Change" and the fifth and final story "The Hair." These two tales actually come close to capturing the mood of magic realism with their simple plots, especially in "The Hair," a story about a pair of twins born conjoined by their hair. Also the artwork in them, particularly in "The Change" which portrays a man whose personality shifts greatly as he deals with heartache, coincides with the words of the story to make the audience empathize with the plights of the characters therein.
But even these have rather clunky, stilted language in them at times, as when the hospital where the twins are born in "The Hair" is described as "slow and honest" or when a new development is signaled in "The Change" with the words "Then one day, something happened." Also these stories can be very inconsistent in their internal logic. The twin sisters in "The Hair," for example, are somehow able to braid the hair they share even though it is connected to both of their heads.
Leah Hayes clearly has great skill as an illustrator, which has led her work to appear in The New York Times and on the cover of McSweeney's. But she wastes these talents in this book, never fully utilizing the "graphic" element of this graphic novel. Instead she relies too much on her words to carry the brunt of the weight, and thus the storytelling leaves a lot to be desired.
Now certainly the book does have style; of this, there is no doubt. The layout of the book is wonderfully designed, and the illustrations themselves are quite lovely. The deceptively simple lines of the artwork match the style of the stories and amplify the emotions the stories evoke. Hayes's drawing can be creepy and build tension if the story calls for it, or it can change gears and create sympathy within the reader for the characters in the stories. There is an image of a funeral near the end of "The Needle" that is breathtaking, and an illustration of a hospital at the beginning of "The Hair" features brilliant use of negative space, akin to some of Frank Miller's best work on Sin City.
The cover to Funeral of the Heart by Leah Hayes. Click for a larger image.It's just a shame there aren't more of her drawings here. Of the total 120 pages in this book, less than 50 of those have any artwork on them. Of that total, five are merely title pages for each story, and several of the remaining images are mere illustrations that do not do anything to help tell the story. Beyond that, there are several non sequitur illustrations which have little to do with the content of the stories they are in. For example, at the beginning of "The Needle," the text describes how two sisters have rushed to their grandmother's deathbed while the illustration depicts people lounging on a beach.
And sadly, most of the style the book has is without substance. Her stories are written in a very childlike way and in a tone similar to that of magic realism, but this attempt at imbuing her work with a dreamlike quality often falls flat. At best, as in the first story "The Bathroom," it comes across as vaguely self-important, akin to the kind of writing you might find in a college literary journal. At worst, it is incredibly pretentious and utterly nonsensical, as can be seen in the second story of the collection, "Whoreson." This tale centers on a man who is covered with hair, becomes a famous writer, has a son who hates him because of his appearance, and whose death causes the waters neighboring the town to fill with fish.
The highlights of this book are the third story "The Change" and the fifth and final story "The Hair." These two tales actually come close to capturing the mood of magic realism with their simple plots, especially in "The Hair," a story about a pair of twins born conjoined by their hair. Also the artwork in them, particularly in "The Change" which portrays a man whose personality shifts greatly as he deals with heartache, coincides with the words of the story to make the audience empathize with the plights of the characters therein.
But even these have rather clunky, stilted language in them at times, as when the hospital where the twins are born in "The Hair" is described as "slow and honest" or when a new development is signaled in "The Change" with the words "Then one day, something happened." Also these stories can be very inconsistent in their internal logic. The twin sisters in "The Hair," for example, are somehow able to braid the hair they share even though it is connected to both of their heads.
Leah Hayes clearly has great skill as an illustrator, which has led her work to appear in The New York Times and on the cover of McSweeney's. But she wastes these talents in this book, never fully utilizing the "graphic" element of this graphic novel. Instead she relies too much on her words to carry the brunt of the weight, and thus the storytelling leaves a lot to be desired.
February 23, 2022
this book really made me think. it was very peculiar
August 23, 2008
This batch of weird, tragic stories would be interesting enough, but it's the drawings that make it all so oddly moving and thrilling. That hatching! Those plump, doomed faces! It's all pretty genius, and Fantagraphics, true to form, puts it together in a freaking gorgeous black-and-white paperback, which you just gotta see to appreciate.
May 22, 2011
This book in it black and white dressing just pulled me in.
Collectible copies here:
http://florida-house.ecrater.com/p/11...
Read my review:
http://fh-whatnot.blogspot.com/2011/0...
Collectible copies here:
http://florida-house.ecrater.com/p/11...
Read my review:
http://fh-whatnot.blogspot.com/2011/0...
March 27, 2013
Beautiful scratchboard drawings accompany short stories with a feeling of noir and fairytale/myth. Overall I found the images more engaging than the stories. The one exception was the last story, The Hair, which I really liked.
August 7, 2008
strange, sad, and kind of shocking, for a comic book.
November 23, 2008
Strange short stories. Sometimes the graphics are disconnected with the words.
June 26, 2010
Blunt, unsettling short stories accompanied by exceptional scratchboard drawings: good times for everyone!
January 31, 2011
... /me hrms. Hard to say. Good. Ish.
July 17, 2008
Beautiful!
July 3, 2018
i need to word this properly but basc: peculiar but simplistic. the art more compelling than the stories (save for the needle & the hair, perhaps). most of the stories read more like concepts than fleshed out narratives but that might just be the stunted prose. and many paragraphs seemed to have organization problems, sentences that should have been rearranged in order to flow better. i can picture this as a stylistic choice but not one with a purpose i could surmise. it made reading more difficult. again the needle & especially the hair were better organized and written (for lack of that telltale disorganization and creepier stories in general). i want to write up short reviews on each of the chapters with more thoughts later.
disclaimer bc i know the author.
disclaimer bc i know the author.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews