I've been looking forward to this since it was announced last summer, and even with all that anticipation, Norrie doesn't let me down a bit. This is a fantastic, realistic and in places absolutely heart-breaking look at long-term relationships and what infidelity can do to them. Rather than coming off as melodrama or even just a cautionary tale, though, Norrie builds some solid and believable characters and twists their lives in a completely realistic way, conveying the excitement of new romance and contrasting it with the sometimes mundane nature of long-term romance, and examining how friendships can often turn into something more.
What stands out the most for me about Cheat is how Norrie develops the relationships of these characters. From the start, it's clear that Janey and Marc have been together for a while, and though their love for one another is clear, the irritation that can come with being with anyone for too long is starting to wear on them as well. The friendship that develops between the two couples is also completely realistic, leading in a completely natural way to a friendship for Janey and Davis. It could almost be a straightforward "meet cute" type story, if not for the complication that both of them are married, which makes it a very different kind of story with different consequences.
Of course, what also really stands out is the artwork. I absolutely love Norrie's style. It has a sort of cartoony, exaggerated element to it, but it is very clean and real at the same time. She draws probably the most expressive characters in comics, and while I associate her style with a sort of gentle, friendly tone, she can certainly pour on the darkness as well. There's a sense of fun in Janey's whirlwind shopping and dressing for dinner, but the darker undercurrent of flirting with someone who is not her husband is still there in the artwork as well. And some of the crucial moments where Janey is confronted by her husband or almost caught in her infidelity are full of the symbolic emptiness and guilt that is so obviously defining the character's thoughts at that moment.
Norrie gets a lot into this story that isn't spelled out explicitly in the script, and I think that's one of those things that only a writer/artist can truly do this well. Little moments like her excitement about an evening with Davis tell us where her mind is, and I loved seeing her husband tell her not to cry, that everything would be OK, when he had no idea what was really going on in her mind as the readers did. The tension of the two couple vacation is also simply amazing, excruciating in terms of what it does to the character but a perfect example of the storytelling mastery that Norrie brings to this book.
Cheat has a tone that is difficult to describe and was probably even harder to nail. It's not a humor book, although there are some funny moments and a generally light touch to it. It's not a melodrama, although there are some gut-wrenching emotional moments. It's almost a slice-of-life book, except that it has a more specific agenda in terms of story and much tighter pacing than most slice-of-life stories that I've read. However you describe it, though, Cheat is one of my favorite reads so far this year, and it's certain to make my "Best Of" list for 2003.
