Ethel & Ernest: A True Story
by Raymond Briggs
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Book Summary Information
Author: Raymond BriggsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-10-23
ISBN: 0375714472
Number of pages: 104
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of Ethel & Ernest: A True Story
Book Review: A Domestic Epic
Summary: 5 Stars
If you care at all about graphic novels (or good storytelling!), and have read Spiegelman's Maus I & II, this is the next book to snap up. Briggs, better known for Father Christmas and The Snowman, demonstrates a novelistic range in this short, but expressive book that traces his parents' courtship, marriage, and death. The book is masterfully developed through short scenes, often in the most mundane moments of life imaginable (trading barbs about politics, marveling at modern inventions, worrying about their son). Even in the midst of war, the couple plods on, preparing tea and fixing up the place, expressing love in these minute domestical details. You really come to know and care about this couple, and the son as well, as he gradually takes his place in the story.
The artwork is immaculate and deserves to be "read" on its own. This is a literal world to inhabit, with every detail remembered and re-created. While many graphic novels have crude, or more expressionistic drawings, Briggs creates a sumptuous tableau of the everyday life as filtered through his unique sensibility. The book ends far too quickly, but it never gets old...I will enjoy reading this again and again over the years.
Summary of Ethel & Ernest: A True Story
Poignant, funny, and utterly original, Ethel & Ernest is Raymond Briggs's loving depiction of his parents' lives from their chance first encounter in the 1920s until their deaths in the 1970s.Ethel and Ernest were solid members of the English working class, part of the generation that lived through the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century. They met during the Depression--she working as a maid, he as a milkman--and we follow them as they court and marry, make a home, raise their son, and cope with the dark days of World War II. Briggs's portrayal of how his parents succeeded, or failed, in coming to terms with the events of their rapidly shifting world--the advent of radio, television, and telephones; the development of the atomic bomb; the moon landing; the social and political turmoil of the sixties--is irresistibly engaging, full of sympathy and affection, yet clear-eyed and unsentimental.
Briggs's illustrations are small masterpieces; coupled with the wonderfully candid dialogue, they evoke the exhilaration and sorrow, excitement and bewilderment, of experiencing such enormous changes. As much a social history as a personal account, Ethel & Ernest is a moving tribute to ordinary people living in an extraordinary time.
From the Hardcover edition.
Raymond Briggs's loving tribute to his parents has an emotional power that far exceeds its deceptively simple technique. Graphic in format, the book combines vigorous but sensitive illustrations with dialogue that cogently elucidates its characters' personalities. Milkman Ernest meets lady's maid Ethel in 1928. In short order they are married, holders of a mortgage, and parents of a boy--solid members of the English working class, aspiring to more for their son. As they experience the Depression, World War II, postwar prosperity and cultural upheaval, readers come to know them intimately. Ernest is left-wing, unashamedly proletarian, and perennially enthusiastic about the great changes modernity is bringing, from unemployment insurance to highways. Ethel is a Tory, a bit of a snob, and far more realistic about how much actual improvement they can expect and what it will cost. They worry about their adored child constantly, especially after he goes to art school. She gets sick and grows senile in 1970; he dies shortly after her in 1971. It's hard to imagine a reader who won't weep when their son looks at the pear tree in the yard of the house the couple inhabited for 41 years and says, "I grew it from a pip." Plain words and plain people strike a universal chord in this touching memoir. --Wendy Smith
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