Cannon

by Lee Lai

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.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Queer, Fiction, LGBT, Canada, Graphic Novels Comics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 2025

About the author

Lee Lai is an Australian cartoonist living in Tio’tia:ke (known as Montreal, Quebec). She has released two graphic novels, Stone Fruit (2021, Fantagraphics) and Cannon (2025, Drawn & Quarterly).

Reviews

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW WOW WOW. Lee Lai knocks it out of the park with this beautifully drawn and deftly realized story about queer friendship set in a hot humid Montreal summer. Two queer Anglophone Chinese Canadian kids who met in high school are still friends in their late 20s, but are growing apart. Is Lucy aka "Luce Cannon" finally going to live up to her nickname and stop taking shit from the girl leading her on, her friend talking over her, her shifty restaurant boss, and her ailing abusive grandpa? Well, YES and it's beautiful to watch.

[Méli · Rating 5 out of 5]

more like Can-oui

[Megan Kirby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really loved this! I think it's rare to find a comic that is so grounded in modern reality while also telling a compelling story. This book would have been successful in any narrative format--movie, novel, tv show, etc--because the story at its core is so good. I read it in two sit-downs on a Saturday afternoon.

The book follows Cannon, a cook at an upscale restaurant who staunchly keeps her cool while her life starts crumbling around her. There are several relationships explored--all with surprising depth given the length of the book--but the core is her friendship with her best friend Trish. Lai gives characters room to breath--and contradict and overlap and evolve. Plus, the beautifully inked panels are always easy to follow. Lai also has a knack for snippets of dialogue, often with text bubbles overlapping or running off the page.

Anyway! Really enjoyed this one--still thinking about it a few days later.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5*

Labai (į)tiko man šis komiksas apie jauną virėją, dirbančią prabangiame Monrealio restorane. Streso kupinas darbas virtuvėje ir mirštančio senelio priežiūra leidžia jai kaip ir pabėgti nuo savęs, kol galiausiai bėgti nebėra jėgų. Na, dar ir apie jos jausmus kolegei ir vaikystės draugei.
Labai patiko autorės grafika. Pagrinde visi kadrai nespalvoti, tačiau nusidažo raudonai tie, kurie išreiškia vidinius išgyvenimus.
Paprasta ir jautru.

[Javier RC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece!! Probably the best comic I’ve read this year 🙌🙌🙌

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gay Chinese Canadian woman in her late twenties is experiencing stress and anger as the pressures in her life mount up: ailing grandfather, absent mother, oblivious and obnoxious friend, hectic workplace, romantic possibility.

Thanks to the opening scene, there is a sense of inevitability and an establishment of low stakes that kept the book from really catching fire in my heart the way Lee Lai's Stone Fruit did, but it is well done and worthy of the accolades it has received (see below).

A large portion of the time I was reading, I kept thinking of the Surface Pressure song from Encanto.


(Best of 2025 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:

• Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2025
• Publishers Weekly 2025 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
• NPR's Books We Love 2025: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels

This book made the PW and NPR lists.)

[naima]

my highschool home group teacher (who also was my english teacher) recommended me this for pride month, its been a hot minute since ive read a graphic novel, but im absolutely intrigued.

[Book Riot Community]

This is one of Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025:

After Stone Fruit, I longed for Lai’s second graphic novel about Cannon, a cook, and Trish, a writer, from Lennoxville. Every week, the best friends—“on the uncool side of [their] twenties”—watch a scary film until distance threatens their bond of 14 years. Opening in a trashed Montreal restaurant with a regretful Cannon, the story returns to three months prior. Featuring mostly black-and-white art, I devoured this, obsessed with the use of color, horror influences, and complex relationships. As I reread this stunning meditation on breath, intimacy, and care, I observed what appears in red, which frames birds populate, and how they converge.

- Connie Pan

[Sole]

Brilliant. Probably the comic of the year. I wish I could write like this.

(And I can totally imagine this as a movie)

[jp arsenault · Rating 5 out of 5]

i feel like i just lived this.

the characters felt like friends and i was so emotionally invested in their lives. i can't believe .... well.

i really enjoyed the dialogue, felt real af, the dynamic between the two main characters was also real. i can see myself, my friends, i don't know. it just felt like reading a memory, from my journal, somewhere between 2010 and 2017.

it was like a documentary.

speaking of memories. as i worked in a restaurant for like almost 10 years, i don't know what i felt reading all those scenes that happened in a restaurant. sometimes i missed it, other times it was just triggering ? i guess it was also very real. sketchy boss, yelling at each other during rush, waiters messing around with kitchen staff, after a shift, over a beer... i know people like that, i've been someone like that.

good old memories. stay memories.

but it good sometimes to read about it and realise how much you've grown.

anyway. this isn't the topic.

lee lai.

i really liked stone fruit. but i absolutely loved cannon.

[Angus McGregor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cannon covers a lot of ground quickly, but I found reading the graphic novel in one sitting to be a unique reading experience.

In particular, the form allowed Lai to represent the power dynamics present in conversations between friends and family. The use of speech bubbles and attention to facial expressions persuaded me that Cannon could only be told visually.

Lai must also be congratulated for being the first book to get a book club consensus since The Safekeep!

[Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cannon and Trish have been friends since middle school, but in their late 20s neither is seeing each other very well anymore. Cannon is struggling under the weight of a demanding restaurant kitchen job and caring for her aging Gung-gung without the help of her avoidant mother or other family members. Trish is moping after a bad breakup, hooking up with guys from the gym for distraction, and searching for the subject of her next big writing project. Their main point of contact is getting together once a week to watch niche horror movies, which Trish barely pays attention to, eating food that Cannon made for them and then dipping. Everyone at work calls Cannon the calm one, the stable one who never causes drama, but Cannon is barely holding it together with long runs and smoothing meditation audio tracks. Her rage and frustration are simmering just below the surface and when they finally burst out it's explosive. This is a stunningly drawn and well written portrait of a complicated friendship and the ways we can betray and take for granted people we have known forever, but also show up for them, even imperfectly, but at the moment it's needed most. I love the art style, the extremely limited color use, and the metaphor of magpies manifesting to show Cannon's tightly controlled anger.

[Ileana (The Tiniest Book Club) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Lee Lai was the first trans and non-binary person to win the Australian Stella Prize with "Cannon". Great decision, because this graphic novel is fantastic!

Cannon is a queer Chinese-Canadian person in their twenties, living in Montreal. Their best friend is Trish. Cannon is taking care of their frail grandfather, working as a line cook in a hip restaurant and hiding their growing anger under a stoic facial expression. Cannon is shy, Cannon is a people pleaser.

"Cannon" balances between horror and humor, with great authenticity and dialogues that feel incredibly real. It's the story of a friendship and of a person who has to learn to set boundaries with friends, family and work if they don't want to get overwhelmed by their repressed feelings.

[Hari Conner · Rating 5 out of 5]

INCREDIBLY good. I don’t often find literary comics that I really love, but this was so absorbing and so beautifully constructed, every panel essential.

Cannon and the ways every character treat her feel so specific and palpable. Cannon’s writer friend is perfectly infuriating and believable - the story she’s writing, ‘I envy you, your life is so straightforward,’ the man she’s sleeping with she can only see as ‘some man’, just the lack of interiority she considers in others - but we still see other sides of her emerge as the story goes on. The restaurant guy is so awful and perfectly observed, and the thorny tangle of cannon’s grandfather’s care and the long implied history with her mother all feel so real, simply told but layered with meaning.

I was completely sucked in and surfaced hours later very emotional - just spectacular, so kind and real and affecting.

[Callie Lirakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words fail

[Anthony Lacroix · Rating 5 out of 5]

je veux manger au jerry's spaghetti

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

set in mtl <3 and packs an emotional punch 🥊

[Kerrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb!

[Meggie Ramm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cannon’s grandpa is ill, her mom isn’t helping, her best friend is secretly using her life as writing fodder, and her job sucks. Cannon is just a ticking bomb.
Lai is the new champ on quiet memoir comics, this rocked. Cannon is dealing with so many pressures, and Lai uses imagery and overlapping speech balloons to racket up the tension between her and her circumstances. Also, if you’ve ever worked a shitty job in the service industry, you will wonder if Lai was there taking notes, because the restaurant scenes are spot on. This novel is lazy and introspective when it’s not shrieking with anger and ratcheting up the tension. Another 10/10.

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vijf sterren voor een zo goed als perfecte graphic novel. Het recept is even simpel als vakkundig: een heerlijke tekenstijl, een ingenieus verhaalritme, onderkoelde humor, emotionele zeggingskracht, twee ijzersterke en bijzonder innemende personages (Cannon en Trish) en hedendaagse thema’s (racisme, gender, identiteit). Top!

[kate j · Rating 4 out of 5]

everyone sees everyone in this book and there is still story leftover. what a gift lai gives us: a demonstration of how to handle rage and forgiveness and the nuance in between.

i love, love the way she draws bodies and bikes. read for that, too.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart and sensitive look at friendships, queer love, family. Very sweet. Read in one sitting.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

ooft, that was a bit too close to home

[ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s so awesome when you read an australian book and it’s actually good 🙏🙏

[Fanny · Rating 5 out of 5]

just so beautifully drawn and plotted.

[Léna Garreau · Rating 4 out of 5]

So cool !!

Loveeee a downward spiral narrative. This one was so well grounded around themes of family, grief, anger, invisibility, and identity. Really nice read. Also go montreal setting !!

[Lune · Rating 5 out of 5]

on ne mesure pas la chance qu'on a d'être en vie en même temps que Lee Lai et de pouvoir lire ses histoires, c'est vraiment magnifique

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. Read it in one sitting- well-deserved winner of the Stella.

[ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

bookclub 5star 🙈

[victoria marie]

Shortlisted for the 2026 Carol Shields Prize in Fiction

/////// fantastic! solid four stars. first ever graphic novel for me (I think?) & so glad it was longlisted here! quite moving.

2026 Carol Shields Prize
shortlisted books are numbered!
1. The White Hot, Quiara Alegría Hudes (5⭐️)
—Suddenly Light, Nina Dunic (5⭐️)
—milktooth, Jaime Burnet (5⭐️)
2. Lion, Sonya Walger (5⭐️)
—Audition, Katie Kitamur
3. Cannon, Lee Lai
—The Sea Gives Up the Dead, Molly Olguin
—Wild Life, Amanda Leduc
—Sea, Poison, Caren Beilin
—Casualties of Truth, Lauren Francis-Sharma
—The Morgue Keeper, Ruyan Meng
4. A Guardian & a Thief, Megha Majumdar
5. Hellions, Julia Elliott
—Canticle, Janet Rich Edwards
—The Edge of Water, Olufunke Grace Bankole
[15/15 & completed!]