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Headland
Following a stroke, 95-year-old Ruth wakes up in a cold, unfamiliar hospital. To escape her grim surroundings, she retreats into a wilderness within her mind. In this interior world she befriends a tortoise who accompanies her on a journey into the unknown. As the days pass, Ruth’s hold on the material world wanes and she moves deeper into her own landscape.
In Headland, artist Kate Schneider pays tribute to her departed grandmother, presenting with deeply felt empathy a perspective little represented in popular literature. Drawn with soft pencils and lush colors, this graphic novel explores the tensions between safety and autonomy, language and silence, holding on and letting go.
In Headland, artist Kate Schneider pays tribute to her departed grandmother, presenting with deeply felt empathy a perspective little represented in popular literature. Drawn with soft pencils and lush colors, this graphic novel explores the tensions between safety and autonomy, language and silence, holding on and letting go.
184 pages, Paperback
Published March 8, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
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August 19, 2022A very well done, graphic novel tribute to her grandmother and her descent into dementia and eventually death.
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August 6, 2023A version of this review was published, in German, in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.
My mother died in April of 2020 at the age of 78. She had spent the first part of her 70’s living the life of a woman much younger: independent, healthy (for her whole life she maintained her weight and dress size from before she had had children), fit (she walked several miles a day and was passionate about yoga), and vibrant. Unexpectedly losing her equally healthy and vibrant husband, my father, a decade earlier was a huge psychological blow to her (as it was to me and my brother), but she carried on with strength and humor. She loved music and movies, reading and having tea with friends, and collecting shells on the beach in her home in Florida. In her 75th year she was struck down by a catastrophic case of severe bilateral pneumonia, which ultimately landed her in a skilled nursing facility. And that’s where she passed, early in the days of the global pandemic. My last in-person visit with her was conducted looking through her window from outside since guests, even family, were not allowed into the facility.
I share this story of my mother because I am still processing her death and my loss. I think to some extent we all spend the rest of our own lives processing the deaths of those we love, but we tend to do so from our own perspectives, not from theirs. At times of sickness and old age, when others need us most, we are often not with them enough. Their illnesses and deaths are too much about us, not them. We lack empathy, which is probably the thing those others most want and need from us. Untrained in these extreme situations, we often don’t know what to do or how to be.
Kate Schenider’s HEADLAND, a remarkable first graphic novel, quietly and beautifully fills that empathetic void. Ruth, an elderly stroke victim, is confined to a hospital bed; we, the readers, see her in her room (attended by nurses and her daughter), but for large parts of the book we also see through her eyes: blurry perceptions, vivid dreams, her consciousness immediate and not intermediated. Ruth’s daughter is, uncomfortably, us: not sure what to say to or do for her mother and distracted by ordinary life outside the hospital. (She’s most memorable as a person on the phone outside the room, not as a family member in the room.) Ruth’s companion on her dream-journeys, a colorful talking tortoise, offers the empathy and authenticity that Ruth cannot get from her living human companions.
HEADLAND is not so much a narrative as it is an exploration of feeling: loneliness, fear of isolation, the desire for dignity, the miracles of consciousness and imagination. (In that way, the book is also a reminder that comics can truly do things no other medium can do: HEADLAND would simply not work as a novel or film.) Schneider’s style is elegantly minimalist: black-and-white graphite drawings with surprising splashes of color to emphasize sensation and perception. Her style puts me in mind of cartoonists like Raymond Briggs and Aidan Koch who, like Schneider, seem almost to be anti-cartoonists, liberated from the traditional grammar and syntax of comics.
HEADLAND is a special graphic novel. I would put it on the shelf next to two other remarkable works: Jean-Dominique Bauby’s almost unimaginable memoir THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, which he composed (by means of blinking one eye) after a massive stroke left him with locked-in syndrome; and Paul Harding’s audacious TINKERS, a complex family history recounted/re-experienced by the narrator on his deathbed. Each of these books is a corrective to a modern world terribly lacking in empathy. HEADLAND reorients us and reminds us that every one of us has a vast and magnificent universe inside our minds, brief and fleeting though our time in this life may be.
My mother died in April of 2020 at the age of 78. She had spent the first part of her 70’s living the life of a woman much younger: independent, healthy (for her whole life she maintained her weight and dress size from before she had had children), fit (she walked several miles a day and was passionate about yoga), and vibrant. Unexpectedly losing her equally healthy and vibrant husband, my father, a decade earlier was a huge psychological blow to her (as it was to me and my brother), but she carried on with strength and humor. She loved music and movies, reading and having tea with friends, and collecting shells on the beach in her home in Florida. In her 75th year she was struck down by a catastrophic case of severe bilateral pneumonia, which ultimately landed her in a skilled nursing facility. And that’s where she passed, early in the days of the global pandemic. My last in-person visit with her was conducted looking through her window from outside since guests, even family, were not allowed into the facility.
I share this story of my mother because I am still processing her death and my loss. I think to some extent we all spend the rest of our own lives processing the deaths of those we love, but we tend to do so from our own perspectives, not from theirs. At times of sickness and old age, when others need us most, we are often not with them enough. Their illnesses and deaths are too much about us, not them. We lack empathy, which is probably the thing those others most want and need from us. Untrained in these extreme situations, we often don’t know what to do or how to be.
Kate Schenider’s HEADLAND, a remarkable first graphic novel, quietly and beautifully fills that empathetic void. Ruth, an elderly stroke victim, is confined to a hospital bed; we, the readers, see her in her room (attended by nurses and her daughter), but for large parts of the book we also see through her eyes: blurry perceptions, vivid dreams, her consciousness immediate and not intermediated. Ruth’s daughter is, uncomfortably, us: not sure what to say to or do for her mother and distracted by ordinary life outside the hospital. (She’s most memorable as a person on the phone outside the room, not as a family member in the room.) Ruth’s companion on her dream-journeys, a colorful talking tortoise, offers the empathy and authenticity that Ruth cannot get from her living human companions.
HEADLAND is not so much a narrative as it is an exploration of feeling: loneliness, fear of isolation, the desire for dignity, the miracles of consciousness and imagination. (In that way, the book is also a reminder that comics can truly do things no other medium can do: HEADLAND would simply not work as a novel or film.) Schneider’s style is elegantly minimalist: black-and-white graphite drawings with surprising splashes of color to emphasize sensation and perception. Her style puts me in mind of cartoonists like Raymond Briggs and Aidan Koch who, like Schneider, seem almost to be anti-cartoonists, liberated from the traditional grammar and syntax of comics.
HEADLAND is a special graphic novel. I would put it on the shelf next to two other remarkable works: Jean-Dominique Bauby’s almost unimaginable memoir THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, which he composed (by means of blinking one eye) after a massive stroke left him with locked-in syndrome; and Paul Harding’s audacious TINKERS, a complex family history recounted/re-experienced by the narrator on his deathbed. Each of these books is a corrective to a modern world terribly lacking in empathy. HEADLAND reorients us and reminds us that every one of us has a vast and magnificent universe inside our minds, brief and fleeting though our time in this life may be.
December 20, 2022
Beautiful, moving and maybe a little too close to home for me. I'm not *that* old, but almost? An old woman has a stroke and wakes up in hospital, disoriented and uncomfortable. She dreams a wilderness that she travels through, but keeps waking up in that same bed. Told primarily in simple, effective colored pencil; a story from the end of life.
October 3, 2023
Beautiful little read. The colored pencil illustrations are both highly detailed and also very loose and childlike (in the best way). The story is touching and really shows the frustration and disorientation that affects so many elderly people. Seeing the woman escaping into her inner world while losing touch of her actual situation was heartbreaking yet beautiful. I really liked it!
April 2, 2022
A quick read but filled with such powerful, lingering emotions. A truly beautiful tribute written with such gentle loving care on a subject not often explored, especially not with such a dignified and respectful approach.
February 26, 2025
Forgot I had this on interloan and it’s due back today so I read it in 15 minutes during some downtime in class. Beautiful, sad, and very delicate. The inner forest. I love minimal books like this that pack an emotional wallop in spite of their brevity.
March 12, 2022
gorgeous, touching down into deep velvety interiority
April 22, 2022
This killed me. I’m dead now. Sorry.
July 23, 2022
The creator’s goal with this book was admirable, but I don’t think it was achieved. The narrative barely hangs together and the art is amateurish.
December 13, 2022
gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations.
December 24, 2022
Gorgeous. Heartbreak and hope in every image.
January 5, 2023
beautiful art
January 8, 2023
If the jacket copy hadn't told me the story was supposed to be empathetic towards the woman who had a stroke I wouldn't have known it.
May 11, 2023
Great use of color vs. gray. A powerful and poignant graphic novel focusing more on the personal experiences of a dementia patient. Recommended for those who like tortoises, birds and forests.
December 27, 2021
5 stars!!! Beautiful and incredibly moving.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews