In the opening scenes of Cannon, Quebec-based Australian cartoonist Lee Lai’s second graphic novel, a flock of magpies sits in a dark, empty restaurant. Tables and chairs are toppled – condiments, cutlery and smashed plates litter the floor. A solitary figure sits among it all, huffing and puffing, unbelieving of what she’s done.
It’s a striking way to begin a story, and a hell of an introduction to a character who’s usually not much like this at all. The titular Cannon (Lucy to her family) is a queer Chinese woman on the “uncool side of [her] twenties” living in Montreal in 2017. The narrative winds back to a few months earlier, then Cannon’s adolescence, to reveal what led her to this breaking point.
Lai’s debut graphic novel, 2021’s Stone Fruit, unfurled the dying days of a relationship between two women. That novel’s realistic dialogue, sparing illustrative style and attention to emotional detail is applied again in Cannon, to depict a constellation of fractured relationships.
There’s Cannon’s family: her emotionally detached mother and her dying gung gung (grandfather), a lifelong tyrant who’s now frail and helpless. There are her relationships at her restaurant job – in particular new colleague and love interest Charlotte, who seems to see Cannon in a way that others don’t and their misogynistic, lecherous boss, Guy.Then there is her longtime best friend, Trish, with whom she bonded as “the only two gay Chinese anglophone teens in all of Lennoxville”.
Shy and stoic, Cannon’s face is normally devoid of expression and her interactions with others are passive. She is often praised for being “solid”, but beads of sweat and very light grey shading on the cheeks betray her true feelings to the reader. Cannon is a classic people pleaser, and others clearly take advantage of that.
She finds solace in running and listening to a mindfulness podcast. “Often, our bodies hold on to tension when we want things to be different,” one episode says. The magpies are a recurring motif, appearing through these self-help sections as well as watching silently from the sidelines during some of Cannon’s more emotionally fraught moments. They even appear beside her gung gung during his. These birds could represent trauma, transformation or, in the Chinese interpretation, good fortune. Whatever they are, the animals become witnesses and companions.
Cannon struggles to set boundaries in her personal and professional spheres. Her budding romance with Charlotte offers glimpses of emotional openness, but the two fail to communicate their expectations of the arrangement. This lack of assertiveness is especially evident in her friendship with the solipsistic Trish, whose speech bubbles often interrupt, edge out or entirely swallow Cannon’s; while Cannon tries to share her emotions regarding her gung gung’s health, Trish drowns her out with gossip and tales of sexual exploits. Cannon’s face reveals her hurt, but she never says it aloud.
The thing that continues to bond Cannon and Trish as adults is their love of Australian horror films. Frames from the movies they watch together are depicted in red – the only colour in the otherwise monochrome novel. These films become portals to the anger that Cannon is suppressing – scenes of violence unfold with demonic characters, who embody the rage that the protagonist feels unable to. Lai’s drawings come alive in these sequences, which crescendo to a red-hot climax, with bursts of fury standing starkly on the page.
Through the character of Trish, who is a writer, Lai offers commentary and critique on the expectations of diaspora artists: “I’m not the kind of Asian that they want,” Trish muses at one point. “They’re probably looking for, like, some intergenerational, immigration-trauma shit.”
Trish’s mentor, Joyce, is a queer, older white woman who “appreciate[s] learning from her” and dispenses tone-deaf advice. “To the funding board, you’re a piece of a cultural niche that they’d very much like in their pocket,” Joyce tells Trish. “Which part, the gay part or the Chinese part?” Trish responds sarcastically. Joyce responds in earnest: “I’d take a guess at both.”
But Trish’s disgust at the trend of trauma narratives doesn’t stop her from participating in it – though she remains emotionally absent from Cannon’s life, she uses it as inspiration for her work. Here, Lai digs up an age-old question: is it ethical to make art that profits from someone else’s suffering? This tension threatens to splinter the pair’s friendship even further; Trish’s desperation for artistic success exists in direct opposition to her epiphany that she needs to be a better friend.
All of this bubbles away under the surface, leading to an explosion. This is an emotional hero’s journey of sorts: Cannon, of course, learns how to stand up for herself and express emotions without fear of retribution. But in Lai’s careful, sensitive hands, it’s much more than that, too. This is a thoughtful, meditative book that is also spiked with necessary anger and moments of levity, all achieved through the dexterity of the graphic novel format. Like the birds that follow Cannon, we can sit, watch her emotional turmoil – then take flight and leave that heaviness behind.
Cannon by Lee Lai is out through Giramondo ($39.95)
