Stone Fruit

by Lee Lai

Overview

An exhilarating and tender debut graphic novel that is an ode to the love and connection shared among three women and the child they all adore.

2022 Cartoonist Studio Prize WINNER

2022 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize WINNER

2022 Lambda Literary Award WINNER, LGBTQ Comics

2022 ALA Stonewall Award Honor Book

2021 National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree

Bron and Ray are a queer couple who enjoy their role as the fun weirdo aunties to Ray’s niece, six-year-old Nessie. Their playdates are little oases of wildness, joy, and ease in all three of their lives, which ping-pong between familial tensions and deep-seeded personal stumbling blocks. As their emotional intimacy erodes, Ray and Bron isolate from each other and attempt to repair their broken family ties — Ray with her overworked, resentful single-mother sister and Bron with her religious teenage sister who doesn’t fully grasp the complexities of gender identity. Taking a leap of faith, each opens up and learns they have more in common with their siblings than they ever knew.

At turns joyful and heartbreaking, Stone Fruit reveals through intimately naturalistic dialog and blue-hued watercolor how painful it can be to truly become vulnerable to your loved ones — and how fulfilling it is to be finally understood for who you are. Lee Lai is one of the most exciting new voices to break into the comics medium and she has created one of the truly sophisticated graphic novel debuts in recent memory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683964261
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	05/11/2021
Pages:	236
Sales rank:	673,719
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lee Lai was born in 1993 in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. Currently, Lai makes comics and illustrations in Tio'tia:ke (Montreal), Quebec. Her short story comics have been featured in The New Yorker, The Lifted Brow, Room Magazine, and Everyday Feminism.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/01/2021

The central couple in Lai’s subtly layered graphic novel debut appear in its first panels as feral creatures with giant, elongated catlike eyes and sharp teeth, chasing through the woods with their equally monstrous niece, Nessie. A phone call from Nessie’s mother transports them back to the real world, and turns them and back into women—anxious, emotive Rachel and reticent, depressive Bron. But the motif of transformation is threaded throughout the story of their family dynamics, and echoed in Lai’s fluid, blue-gray illustrations. Tension builds: Rachel’s sister (Nessie’s mom) isn’t fond of Bron, and Bron misses her estranged family but doesn’t know how to talk about her feelings. During a three-month separation, each looks to their family of origin for answers. Rachel describes Bron’s parents as “waspy Christian maniacs” who never came to terms with their daughter’s gender transition. Bron’s dad sees Rachel as “that angry Chinese girl.” Yet the women’s youthful us-against-the-world mentality is wearing thin: “All the structures we’d built together suddenly felt unbearably fragile,” Rachel observes. Lai’s cinematic juxtapositions and dreamlike fugues give visual structure to a breakup story that’s heavy on processing, sharpening its edges. Lai also skillfully captures the ways family dynamics and histories play out in romantic relationships, and how heavy those legacies can land. The result is a poignant and mature rumination on how people change, and change each other, proving Lai a talent well worth watching. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Lai tells her story with control and authority and it’s impossible not to admire the way she has made a dextrous narrative out of so much taciturnity and mossy sadness."

The Guardian

"Lai poignantly illustrates the sometimes futile search for happiness and the grace in being open to the changes around us."

NPR: Best Books of 2021

"Beautifully drawn and emotionally resonant."

Vogue

"This quiet work of startling complexity is a remarkable contribution to the chorus of queer storytelling."

Chicago Review of Books

"This graphic novel, Lee Lai’s first, is bittersweet and filled with authentic dialogue and realistic situations, including a lack of tidy resolutions. You can’t help but root for the characters."

The New York Times

"A shockingly relatable and beautifully illustrated insight into the sticky complications of contemporary relationships."

Bitch Media

"A beautiful and evocative reflection on queer identity, relationships, vulnerability and acceptance of self and others."

Ms. Magazine

"The way Lai illustrates emotional truths that can be hard to say with words is stunning. The sheer humanness of this story took my breath away."

Book Riot - 5 Queer Graphic Novels and Memoirs You Won't Want to Miss in 2021

"Stone Fruit is one of the best comics I’ve read this year, one that will linger the way Spinning or Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me did. It’s an incredible debut and leaves me hoping we see much more from Lee Lai."

Multiversity Comics

"Lee Lai's graphic novel debut is an elegantly illustrated and introspective marvel, a deeply moving story about the push and pull between family and selfhood. ... [A] book that will change the literary landscape in 2021."

O The Oprah Magazine

"Stone Fruit explores the awkwardness of navigating mundane problems as a queer adult after the sparkle has faded from the rainbow."

Women Write About Comics

"Athena-like, Lai bursts onto the graphic scene fully formed and utterly realized with this jaw-dropping debut. Raw, intricate, and impassioned, Lai’s resonating accomplishment proves astonishing."

Booklist (starred review)

"Lai poignantly illustrates the sometimes futile search for happiness and the grace in being open to the changes around us."

NPR: Best Books of 2021

★ 04/01/2021

DEBUT Queer couple Ray and Bron spend their weekly hangouts with Ray's six-year-old niece Nessie running carefree through the woods and singing nonsense songs with abandon. Whenever they return Nessie to her mother—Ray's seemingly disapproving sister Amanda—the couple's relationship turns fraught and tense. When Bron leaves Ray to reunite with her devoutly religious, emotionally repressed family, Ray is devastated at being abandoned by the one person with whom she felt capable of experiencing true intimacy. With nowhere else to turn, she begins spending more time with Amanda and discovers that her own struggles have made her ignorant of the pressure her sister experiences as a single mother. Meanwhile, Bron, who's frustrated by her mother's refusal to accept her sexuality or engage in a conversation about her history of mental illness, ponders an uncertain future. VERDICT Lai presents a tender and emotionally raw examination of three women struggling to form and maintain their identities within and outside of their immediate family, illustrated in a loosely expressive style that conveys both bombastic catharsis and silent anguish with aplomb.

Library Journal