#22. Good As Lily, by Derek Kirk Kim and Jesse Hamm
#22. Good as Lily, by Derek Kirk Kim (writer) and Jesse Hamm (illustrator)
Marvel Comics (Minx imprint), 2007
I ordered this book from the library on the strength of the short-story collection The Eternal Smile (reviewed in a previous post), the 2009 collaboration between Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang. I have already had a taste of Yang's solo work (in American Born Chinese), and I liked The Eternal Smile well enough that I became eager to check out Kim's solo work as well. So I asked the library for Same Difference and Other Stories, which is Kim's debut collection, published in 2003; and Good as Lily, which is a graphic novel published in 2007 by Marvel's short-lived Minx line for tween girls. (AAARGGH I HATE THAT NAME.)
Anyway. Good As Lily isn't bad, although I don't like it as much as Kim's earlier book (for reasons I will elucidate). It's about a high-school senior, named not Lily but Grace -- last name Kwon; Grace, her family, and many though not all of the supporting cast are Korean American -- who is going through the challenges and pleasures of preparing to leave her family for college, and of getting through her last year with her friends, frenemies and fellow drama-club members in her California high school. (The story opens with a surprise birthday party for Grace, arranged by her friends, and capped off with Grace's announcement that she's been accepted to Stanford for the fall: thus the stakes, and the rite-of-passage issues, are set up right away.)
Grace stumbles from her real-world concerns into the numinous and fantastic when a peculiar coincidence of circumstances, including an ice-cream stand and a pinata, finds her in the beachside park late at night encountering three startling individuals: an eight-year-old girl, a stylish 30-year-old, and an elderly woman. They are perfectly ordinary people, except that they are also all named Grace Kwon and, Grace quickly realizes, are all *her*: versions of herself who have been, respectively, pulled forward or back in time in order to meet with her now. What follows is a tragicomedy of errors, as Grace tries to house her doppelgängers without drawing her parents' attention, explain their presence to her friends, and prevent them from meddling too outrageously in her life. There is also, of course, the implicit necessity of unraveling the metaphysical puzzle: why are these alternate Graces here, and what are she, or they, supposed to do in order to send them back?...
Although this book has some shortcomings, I find I like it more and more, the more I reflect on it. It's actually quite a sophisticated piece of YA literature, and reminds me in some ways of good YA novels I've known that effectively marry the magical or unreal with the difficult psychology of teenage identity and family issues; the New Zealand novelist Margaret Mahy's books come to mind.
Of the things I didn't like, some of them have to do with what seem to me misguided changes of tone -- it will lapse into vaudevillian passages, or "light-hearted" high-school comedy, when the underlying themes seem to be really more serious than that. I don't know whether or not it would be fair to attribute this to the possible constraints Kim may have been under working for Minx; I also wonder whether that might be the reason why certain other issues -- e.g., the mystery of the eponymous Lily -- don't get as much time as, once having been introduced, they seem to need.
Also, I really am not a big fan of the artwork, which is by one Jesse Hamm. It's serviceable enough, I guess, but when I compare it to Kim's own very stylish, sophisticated and fluent work in The Eternal Smile and Same Difference, I find myself baffled as to why he wasn't the one to illustrate this book as well. Unless, despite his skill, he wanted to get away from illustration and try just writing?... I don't know. Anyway, the art is not really a standout here, although, as I say, it more or less does the job.
All in all a very interesting book, one of the more successful pieces I've seen from the Minx line. (I STILL HATE THAT NAME! And I can't help being glad they got served for it. ;)
[Tags I wish I could add: i: hamm jesse, coming of age, california, magic realism.]
Marvel Comics (Minx imprint), 2007
I ordered this book from the library on the strength of the short-story collection The Eternal Smile (reviewed in a previous post), the 2009 collaboration between Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang. I have already had a taste of Yang's solo work (in American Born Chinese), and I liked The Eternal Smile well enough that I became eager to check out Kim's solo work as well. So I asked the library for Same Difference and Other Stories, which is Kim's debut collection, published in 2003; and Good as Lily, which is a graphic novel published in 2007 by Marvel's short-lived Minx line for tween girls. (AAARGGH I HATE THAT NAME.)
Anyway. Good As Lily isn't bad, although I don't like it as much as Kim's earlier book (for reasons I will elucidate). It's about a high-school senior, named not Lily but Grace -- last name Kwon; Grace, her family, and many though not all of the supporting cast are Korean American -- who is going through the challenges and pleasures of preparing to leave her family for college, and of getting through her last year with her friends, frenemies and fellow drama-club members in her California high school. (The story opens with a surprise birthday party for Grace, arranged by her friends, and capped off with Grace's announcement that she's been accepted to Stanford for the fall: thus the stakes, and the rite-of-passage issues, are set up right away.)
Grace stumbles from her real-world concerns into the numinous and fantastic when a peculiar coincidence of circumstances, including an ice-cream stand and a pinata, finds her in the beachside park late at night encountering three startling individuals: an eight-year-old girl, a stylish 30-year-old, and an elderly woman. They are perfectly ordinary people, except that they are also all named Grace Kwon and, Grace quickly realizes, are all *her*: versions of herself who have been, respectively, pulled forward or back in time in order to meet with her now. What follows is a tragicomedy of errors, as Grace tries to house her doppelgängers without drawing her parents' attention, explain their presence to her friends, and prevent them from meddling too outrageously in her life. There is also, of course, the implicit necessity of unraveling the metaphysical puzzle: why are these alternate Graces here, and what are she, or they, supposed to do in order to send them back?...
Although this book has some shortcomings, I find I like it more and more, the more I reflect on it. It's actually quite a sophisticated piece of YA literature, and reminds me in some ways of good YA novels I've known that effectively marry the magical or unreal with the difficult psychology of teenage identity and family issues; the New Zealand novelist Margaret Mahy's books come to mind.
Of the things I didn't like, some of them have to do with what seem to me misguided changes of tone -- it will lapse into vaudevillian passages, or "light-hearted" high-school comedy, when the underlying themes seem to be really more serious than that. I don't know whether or not it would be fair to attribute this to the possible constraints Kim may have been under working for Minx; I also wonder whether that might be the reason why certain other issues -- e.g., the mystery of the eponymous Lily -- don't get as much time as, once having been introduced, they seem to need.
Also, I really am not a big fan of the artwork, which is by one Jesse Hamm. It's serviceable enough, I guess, but when I compare it to Kim's own very stylish, sophisticated and fluent work in The Eternal Smile and Same Difference, I find myself baffled as to why he wasn't the one to illustrate this book as well. Unless, despite his skill, he wanted to get away from illustration and try just writing?... I don't know. Anyway, the art is not really a standout here, although, as I say, it more or less does the job.
All in all a very interesting book, one of the more successful pieces I've seen from the Minx line. (I STILL HATE THAT NAME! And I can't help being glad they got served for it. ;)
[Tags I wish I could add: i: hamm jesse, coming of age, california, magic realism.]