Lucky Book

Gabrielle Bell's 'Lucky' is less a graphic novel and more a collection of semi-autobiographical humorous comics about life as a twenty-something artist struggling to get by in New York. Divided into three sections it charts the mundane details, small anxieties and hassles of everyday life and also the development of Bell as an artist.
Lucky 1 began as a challenge Bell set herself to create a comic diary for one month. Each day's often trivial 'events' are detailed in simply drawn six panel comics. There is a lot of narration packed into the frames and the details are described from a sort of wide-eyed outsider perspective. We follow Bell through a succession of minimum-wage jobs - artist model, retail, tutoring - watch her deal with the stresses of searching for somewhere to live, and get a glimpse of her sometimes tetchy and fragile relationship with boyfriend Tom.
In Lucky 2 Bell becomes more selective about the events she includes in her comic. The work is less like a daily diary and more like short stories extending over several pages. The narrative is more crafted and the drawings are slightly more worked and detailed while still retaining the elegant clear line quality. Lucky 3 takes these development even further with stories that are more introspective, insightful and at times genuinely revealing about Bell. The work has progressed from detailed mundane naturalistic reporting to include extended inner dialogue, dream sequences and sometimes surreal fantasy. When Lucky 3 was self-published separately it received wide acclaim and was winner of a prestigious Ignatz award.
Throughout this volume the emphasis is on characterisation rather than action. Bell observes without judgement and her writing is sharply witty and intelligent. Much of the whimsical humour comes from her terrific ear for dialogue. Stories about how hard it is to be twenty-something in a big city can often be hard to like and seem self-indulgent to anyone not from that demographic but Bell's honest, self-deprecating (and just occasionally cynical) voice has created something fresh and insightful that will reward repeated readings.