Stone Fruit

Starred review from April 1, 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.

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Starred review from May 15, 2021
Athena-like, 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 pages of 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, Lai's resonating accomplishment proves astonishing.

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