Let's start with a face: Dave's face, Dave who falls just short of alopecia universalis, hairless apart from his eyebrows and one tiny hair between his nose and upper lip. Dave wears a wig and lives alone; at night, he sits at a table overlooking the street, and he sketches what he sees. Dave lives right at the edge of a place called Here, where everything is neat, tidy, in the right place. Just outside Here is the sea, then the Edge of the Sea, and then There, which is disorder, chaos, evil. Beyond that, nothing is known.
Dave lives his quiet life, going to work, presenting reports on data, going home, falling asleep at his table. Everything is orderly, except for that one hair. Whether he cuts it, shaves it or waxes it, within half an hour it's back, exactly the same--no longer, no shorter. Of course, just one hair is hardly evil, but when a profusion of equally indestructible hairs begin to rapidly emerge, it can mean only chaos.
A psychologist comes to help, promising privacy but promptly making Dave famous. Dave and the people of Here struggle to find meaning in the madness, calling into question not only how to trim the untrimmable, but how to reconcile and accept the changes the beard is stirring within them. In this debut graphic novel, Stephen Collins's black-and-white illustrations and simple, rhythmic text make for a moving and remarkably funny examination of conformity, safety, uncertainty and--yes--what happens when a man grows a beard so big that it threatens to smother entire city blocks. --Matthew Tiffany, LCPC, writer for Condalmo and psychotherapist