Lucky

“Lucky” was a completely different reading experience than “The Imposter’s Daughter.” For one thing, the narrative was constructed in a very different way. Unlike Sandell’s graphic novel, which covered a vast portion of her life- from childhood to mid-30’s- “Lucky” focused more on the author’s experiences of everyday, sort of one day at a time. Bell makes a note in the introduction to explain that she had no grand goal in mind when approaching the story, which left a lot up to the imagination. In terms of just the illustrations, a lot was left up to the reader to determine; this was a direct contrast to Sandell’s book. The lack of color in any of the pictures kept the mood somewhat level in a way that after a while it may have seemed out of place in the story to have exaggerated bursts of emotion on the faces of the characters (like Sandell’s father being so angry his venous eyes pop out of his head). The black and white coloring also adds emphasis to Bell’s frame of mind. From the beginning of the story, it’s clear that she feels empty and, if not depressed, then certainly lacking and unfulfilled. Like the effect of the black and white pictures, much of her story is left undisclosed as well. There was not the same sense that she was spilling out all of her past onto the pages. Her story begins and ends basically in the middle of her life, in the midst of a situation that does not change drastically by the end. We as observers are never given much information concerning her or her past, but only how she feels about circumstances in the present. Tom is an interesting part of her story because he features prominently, yet follows the same route as Bell in terms of remaining undisclosed. By the end of it the only thing we know is that he is working somewhere slicing pizza and is apparently no more content with his life than she is. In those sorts of instances everything seems so unbearably frustrating for her that despite the lack of them so far, I still expected Bell to suddenly switch to more exaggerated illustrations. But the mood the author conveyed in the illustrations remained consistent with the initial sense of emptiness. She was so effective in bringing the reader into her day-to-day reaffirmations of an unfulfilled life that it seems impossible that there could be any great resolution or finality in the end. In the scene where she describes her boss at the jewelry beading job as the “warden” and her coworkers as other “inmates” does not add a lot of hope to her circumstances. In a way the consistent number of frames throughout the three portions of the story adds to the effect created by the color scheme and illustration type. Because she and the other characters remain in the same size and shape of frame, the same number of which is on every page, her circumstances seem sort of inescapable. A good example of this is on pg. 19, where the note from her roommates listing all of the expensive renovations needed is taped onto the wall and takes up as much space as the actual characters in the other frames do. The note is smack in the center as though there is nothing she can do to get away from it. Even thought there was not one long, continuous plot and storyline like in the first one, the sense of continuity in respect to her character and her character’s feelings made it feel whole in all the same ways as the first story we read.