Take two girls. Charlie, dark and scowling, is a scrappy preteen whose single mother has no idea how to deal with her extended absences from their shack-like home at the edge of a wood, while Astrid, fair-haired and timidly polite, inhabits a cosy middle-class world of family dinners and indulgent shopping trips (there is never a wrong time for a new dress). They are, in other words, total opposites, and at school Charlie affects hardly to know Astrid, keen to keep up appearances in front of the boys who bully them both. When the day is done, however, they’re clandestine friends, united by an uncommon unhappiness and the terrifying pact it has brought them to make.
Look back on adolescence, and it seems like a bad dream – or a serious illness. My own is at once vivid and hard to remember, its sludgy days (I thought they’d never end) punctuated by tepid Nescafé and wild dramas of my own making – which may be why Manon Debaye’s The Cliff left me feeling so peculiar. At first sight, her acclaimed graphic novel looks to be utterly delightful, its colour pencil sketches full of nostalgic picture book charm. Here are cute striped T-shirts, whispering silver birch trees, and an azure sea. But don’t be lulled! In truth, hers is a dark story. Think Lord of the Flies transposed to 21st-century France. It’s about what can all too easily happen to young people when adults turn away, distracted either by their own problems, or by the complacent conviction that no child of theirs has any right really to be unhappy.
The tale is told day-by-day, the clock ticking ever more loudly on Charlie and Astrid’s terrible plan (which I won’t give away). We know that the bullied often turn out to be bullies themselves, and so it is with Charlie. At school, both girls are outcasts, but in the edge-lands to which they disappear on their bicycles after hours, Charlie is the stronger of the two, bending Astrid forcefully to her will. The liminality of the outdoor spaces they visit – especially the clifftop of the book’s title – reflects the way they’re hovering on the brink of young adulthood. But for all their fierceness and determination, they’re still children, and Debaye gives us a lovely, piercing moment – a minor epiphany for her characters, as well as for the reader – when they briefly break off from their power struggle to mess about with each other’s hair. “You look like the queen of an ancient kingdom,” says Astrid, admiring her own handiwork. “And you look like an elf,” Charlie replies with a smile, feeling pretty just for once.
The Cliff, now translated into English by Montana Kane, won the 2023 Philippe Druillet prize at the Angoulême international comics festival, and it isn’t hard to see why. In its daring, it seems so profoundly French to me. Brilliant, beautiful and bracing, it forces you to remember – whether you want to, or not.
• The Cliff by Manon Debaye is published by Drawn & Quarterly (£21). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
