The Cliff

French cartoonist Manon Debaye’s 2021 debut graphic novel The Cliff, new in English, follows young Charlie and Astrid over the course of a week, as they’ve made a pledge to commit suicide by throwing themselves off a nearby cliff on Friday before noon, when Charlie turns 13. When they first make this vow to one another on Monday, slicing their hands and pledging with blood, it’s unclear why they would want to do so, as they seem quite happy talking with each other. However, as the week progresses, it becomes obvious that both of them are miserable.

Charlie’s unhappiness is twofold. First, her mother is dating Daniel, a man whom Charlie clearly doesn’t have a good relationship with, though the reader doesn’t see much of him, and Debaye gives no information on Charlie’s father. However, whenever Charlie interacts with her mother, their conversations consist of little more than Charlie screaming at her to shut up. While, on one level, this behavior seems like nothing more than a child who’s growing up and beginning to rebel, Charlie has real anger toward her mother and almost everybody else in the book.

The second and more important reason is that Charlie wants to be a boy. She never states this desire, but everything about her behavior signals it to the reader. Rather than going by Charlotte, she chooses "Charlie." She dresses like the boys at her school, and she hangs out with a small gang who do little more than antagonize other students, whether through loudly commenting on girls’ appearances or tripping and shoving other boys. Charlie is the toughest among them, having beaten up Enzo, the leader of the crew. In fact, one way to read the suicide pact with Astrid is that Charlie doesn’t want to move into young womanhood because society will then expect her to be more feminine.

The reader spends less time with Astrid, only really seeing her through Charlie’s eyes, so the cause of her unhappiness is less clear. She doesn’t have any friends at school, so she spends her time reading or writing in a journal. Her parents seem to care about her—one of them picks her up from school every day, and they take her shopping to buy new clothes—but she doesn’t seem to care about them. She very much cares about Charlie, though. When Astrid asks Charlie why she’s friends with Enzo, Charlie responds, “He’s the second toughest.” Astrid responds, “Yeah, but he’s… You could use your strength to save people!” Charlie becomes confused and asks, “Like who?” Astrid responds simply, “Me.” That causes Charlie’s temper to flare up. Enzo, meanwhile, tries to goad Charlie into revealing her true feelings toward Astrid, which might have something to do with Astrid’s unhappiness.

On one level, Debaye’s story is about the challenges of being in middle school, as almost all of us remember what it’s like to try to fit in at that age. We were bullies or we were bullied. We aligned ourselves with part of a group that judged others, or we were the loners other people judged harshly. We were constantly aware of where we fell in the hierarchies, especially when we fell outside of them altogether. However, Debaye’s book is especially about what it means to be a girl in middle school, as that comes with its own pressures. Both Charlie and Astrid know they don’t fit in, albeit for very different reasons, and they don’t know any other way to handle it than to talk about ending their lives. While it might seem she doesn’t care about what others want from her, there are numerous panels that show Charlie looking around to see who’s watching her when she behaves in ways that don’t fit the norm. Even though Astrid appears to align with feminine expectations, she too looks around to see others watching her, snickering to one another. The lack of obvious difference doesn’t ease her pain; in fact, it might make it worse, as she doesn’t understand why others treat her the way they do.

Debaye’s art matches the realistic tone of her story, as each panel is painstakingly drawn with what appears to be colored pencils. She uses dark backgrounds especially to show the menace that often lies behind scenes that might otherwise seem innocuous, a technique that works quite well whenever Charlie goes home. She lives on the edge of the woods, so that trees and shadows are positioned by Debaye to loom over Charlie’s life. Even though the pivotal scene of the work happens in the daytime at school, the background and surrounding characters are all shaded quite darkly, showing the change that has come over the characters and the situation.

Like life for many of us at Charlie and Astrid’s age, Debaye’s work is dark, though there are moments of brightness. The end of innocence, the move toward adulthood, feels like a cliff for many children; Charlie and Astrid are no different. If life is going to toss them over a cliff, they plan on taking matters into their own hands. But life is even more complicated than they know - as are people, as they are themselves, a fact they have only begun to learn.

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