Sixteen year old Kimberly Keiko Cameron (aka Skim) uses her diary, as many do, to think through issues, news and feelings. However, after a boy going out with one of the girls at school takes his own life and the students are caught up in a frenzy of both grief and speculation, Skim’s own world seems to turn upside down as well. Her diary reveals her loneliness, her feelings of isolation and the ways in which she starts to think through how she feels about love, identity and friendship.

This is a thoughtful and poignant first graphic novel, which is very much worth reading. It offers some very big themes, but handles them effectively, especially in the way it alludes to issues rather than bludgeoning the reader with them.

All the same the picture that the reader begins to build up is of family tensions along with some based around not belonging to any clique in school (thus revisiting the outsider narrative that would be familiar to adult female readers of the school stories in Bunty, although with more emotional realism) and also a feeling of being an ethnic outsider in the almost wholly white-dominated community. Skim’s feelings of not ‘belonging’ are further exacerbated by her feelings for one of the teachers, Ms Archer.

 One example of the way that issues are handled can be seen in the theme of witchcraft. Skim and her close friend Lisa, who is rather more cynical and worldly-wise, are both interested in it and in tarot, which means that they are seen by the school guidance teacher as ‘goth’ and therefore likely to be vulnerable to depression as a consequence of the suicide. Skim knows she is depressed, but also knows it is nothing to do with her beliefs and her diary neatly critiques the teacher’s lack of insight. What one realises from the diary entries is that Skim is looking for guidance from all sorts of spaces and people.

Whilst the teacher leaves and the romance is largely unrealised, it is a turning point for Skim in terms of how she sees herself. Throughout the book we see her trying on different identities, thinking through her need to change and mature. This eventually leads to changes in friendships, as well as in style.

 This is gentle and lyrical, despite being full of incident (and some swearing). The pacing gives it a dream-like quality. The focus on the school and school life gives it a time-less-ness, despite the setting of the mid-1990s. The dialogue is strong.

The drawing is equally lyrical, with some lovely drawings of the young people involved in the narrative, especially of Skim. Some of the pages incorporating landscape and town are also terrific, evoking mood as well as place.

2009-07-03