Synopsis
We arrive to wreckage—a restaurant smashed to rubble, with tables and chairs upended riotously. Under the swampy nighttime cover of a Montreal heat-wave, this is where we meet our protagonist, Cannon, dripping in little beads of regret sweat. She was supposed to be closing the restaurant for the night, but instead, well, she destroyed it. The mess feels a bit like a horror-scape—not unlike the horror films Cannon and her best friend, Trish, watch together. Cooking dinner and digging into deep cuts of Australian horror films on their scheduled weekly hangs has become the glue in their rote relationship. In high school, they were each other’s lifeline—two queer second-generation Chinese nerds trapped in the suburbs. Now, on the uncool side of their twenties, the essentialness of one another feels harder to pin down.
Yet, when our stoic and unbendingly well-behaved Cannon finds herself—very uncharacteristically—surrounded by smashed plates, it is Trish who shows up to pull her the hell outta there.
From: Drawn & Quarterly
Notes on This Title
The main characters of this title are two queer Chinese Canadian women.
There is an incidence of workplace sexual harassment.
Awards
None.
Reviews
“The author of Stone Fruit returns with the story of a young queer Chinese woman struggling to express her emotions and be heard.” (Source: The Guardian)
“Lee Lai’s CANNON flawlessly depicts an unravelling.” (Source: The Beat)
“Lee Lai lives up to all the promise of her award-winning debut ‘Stone Fruit’ with a powerful, bittersweet follow-up.” (Source: Broken Frontier)
Interviews
Chicago Review of Books: “The Expansiveness of Visual and Verbal Craft in “Cannon”: A Conversation With Lee Lai“