Review by Ian Keogh

Laura Gao’s graphic novel début was the widely praised Messy Roots, delving into the complications arising from her American and Asian heritage. A creator achieving success with anything autobiographical then faces the dilemma of where to head next if there’s not enough further incident to fill a sequel. Gao’s solution is moving into fiction to tell the story of Kirby Tan, competitive high school climber.

Gao begins by establishing Kirby as coming from a churchgoing family and that her father died at some stage when she was younger. Climbing was also his hobby, but when Kirby takes a tumble it’s off the agenda for a few months. If that wasn’t bad enough, she needs to make up extracurricular school credits with something else in the meantime, and is guided to the school newspaper. However, what the newspaper needs is someone to to write the fortune telling column. Kirby knows nothing of astrology, not even her own star sign, and the paper’s editor Bex Santos is extremely forceful.

From that Gao weaves a slice of life drama, firstly around the needs of the paper and Bex’s drama queen behaviour, and then increasingly about Kirby becoming attracted to her and how that contradicts church doctrine.

Everything is drawn in a loose scratchy style that screams rapidity. Any energy it provides, though, is diminished by chaotic or dull pages, with any middleground rare. The whole book has the look of being constructed from one panel to the next and showing what’s necessary without considering the appearance of a complete page. There’s not enough variation to the viewpoints and sometimes a section requires reading twice because what’s happening isn’t clear enough from the art.

The friendship between Kirby and Bex is well developed from a faltering start, and Kirby’s uncertainties and feelings are the strongest aspect throughout, but the plot of setting people up romantically via astrological advice is never properly developed. It features secondary characters, so retains some validity, but floats in and out too often to have the desired impact when it reaches a crisis point. Far better is Kirby having a heart to heart with the local pastor, and the doubt and drama over the final third is the best of the book. If only we could have reached there sooner.

Kirby’s Lessons For Falling in Love shines for brief moments, but spending more time on the creation, especially on the art, would have resulted in a far better book.