24 May / Stone Fruit by Lee Lai [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Athena-like, Lee Lai bursts onto the graphic scene fully formed and utterly realized with this jaw-dropping debut. Her stunning artistry and complex narrative skills prove inextricably stupendous in a story about all kinds of love – between lovers, of course, but also between complicated extended family.
“Things were best when Nessie was about six,” the opening page declares. “We were at our best, for a while, anyway.” Turn the page and suddenly three monsters-in-motion command the panels, filled with fine-lined, stretched, and stylized figures in a limited palette, until a phone call momentarily transforms one of the beasts into a woman long enough for her to tell a few lies.
That “best” is wild, uninhibited outdoor playtime with young Nessie and her aunties, Ray and Bron. But reality proves unavoidable when Ray must return Nessie to her sister, Amanda – a single mother who begrudgingly tolerates Ray and is especially disapproving of Ray’s relationship with Bron. Break-up feels inevitable as Bron leaves to attempt a reconciliation with her own estranged parents who, like Amanda, have been quick to judge and dismiss. Mourning pervades all the various relationships, with Nessie’s suffering perhaps most poignant of all, as a young child caught in the emotional struggles of all the adults she loves most.
Raw, intricate, and impassioned, Australia-born, Montreal-based Lai’s resonating accomplishment proves astonishing.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, May 15, 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2021