Customer Reviews

Ethel & Ernest: A True Story

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3 star:		(2)
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An absolutely wonderful memoir, and I use the word memoir deliberately as this is not simply or solely a story told in images, Briggs shows as much in each picture as any prose writer could in several paragraphs of type. This book made me laugh and cry. I gave a copy to my parents and another to a teenage friend, I can't imagine anyone not enjoying Ethel and Ernest's story. A must have.

Ethel and Ernest are two rather ordinary people. They get married around 1930, live together in the same house for 41 years, have a son, and then die the same year. Neither of them does anything more extraordinary than live and love.

And that's more than enough. Briggs' story is little more than a series of snippets of conversation and events of a long relationship. We see Ethel and Ernest bond, bicker, and regret. We see the love they have for themselves, and how they adjust over time. There's a great conversation between the two while Ernest is watching the moon landing, and Ethel just doesn't see the big deal of it all. I was greatly surprised when the story was done and I felt real sorrow for the two of them. Briggs' artwork is really moving, and displays the changing of the times on his parents very well.

This is a nice, quiet, loving character study about two people who may not have lived an exciting life, but that's probably one of the things that makes this piece of graphic literature work best. Highly recommended to all fans of serious graphic art.

Told in mostly cartoon form, with dialogue alongside, this wonderful, unique book tells the true story of the author's parents, two "ordinary" people, from their first shy meeting to their last days together. World War two, the birth of television, the development and use of the atomic bomb are all seen through the eyes of Ethel and Ernest. I was charmed by the two of them, from their earliest days together to the purchase of their first house, birth of their son, wartime experiences (gas masks, blackout curtains, sending their 5 year old son to the country to be safe during the war), their son's marriage and the gradual decline and death of Ethel and Ernest. Jumps off the page!

I've long been a fan of Raymond Briggs' beautiful and evocative illustrations. This is his most personal work to date. This is not about a magical snowman or Father Christmas -- this is about the artist's parents, good, hard-working people who survived the depression, the Blitz, post-war rations and a son in art school. Ethel and Ernest are the British counterparts to Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" and their son tells their story lovingly and beautifully through his talent for illustration. This book would make a great gift for an Anglophile, a young person who should know more about his grandparent's generation and the hardships they endured, or for a member of that generation who might like to reminisce about the days before television when an indoor bathroom was considered a real luxury.

Actually, its a pleasure knowing that since I have bought this illustrated book, it has been passed on to friends of friends of friends! I havn't even seen it for a month. No one can resist this book, which is an affectionate yet honest look by the author/illustrator Raymond Briggs, who tells the story of the courtship and life of his mother Ethel and father Ernest, set squarely in a historical period of Britian. The historical detail is amazing - from the comic antagonism of the political attitudes displayed by his mother and father, to the harsh reality of facing World War II on families. But the story is told with such humour and insight, and with such a powerful undercurrent of sadness and love, that it is uplifting rather than depressing.

I noticed another reviewer said this book was hard to catergorise - and that is so. It is not a story with a particular point - the point, if any, is about life.

Briggs' depiction of his parents' lives from their meeting in the 1920s to their deaths in the 1970s takes the form of a graphic novel with color cartoon panel sets on each page. Ethel & Ernest provides an involving social history of England during the times, as well as an intimate portrait of a British couple's life. Hard to categorize but involving.

A charming, heartfelt and moving story - a lovely memorial to the author's parents (and a reminder of how short life really is).

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.

Raymond Briggs turns his fine artistic repetoire to some of the issues that matter most in this precious book. It is precious because it is simply the lives of ordinary people told in pictures and words with more power than a Hollywood blockbuster. Those who love Briggs for the Father Christams stories will be reminded that this is also the creator of the Tin Pot Foreign General and a domestivated couple facing oblivion in a nuclear war. The messages remain as gentle as ever. If you wish to raise your children as literate, peaceful citizens of the world then this book should find its way through your home... pass it on to others if you can.

It is now a truism that comics are no longer just for children, and we could add here that picture books are no longer just for children either. For over 20 years now, Raymond Briggs has been the master of writing picture or comic style books with the simplicity of a children's book, but that deal with complex, adult issues like nuclear holocaust (When the Wind Blows) or social exclusion and class differences (Gentleman Jim).

Ethel and Ernest is a true story - the biography of Briggs' parents. It follows their story from their first meeting during the depression era through to their deaths in the early 1970s. Unlike a typical written biography, this books doesn't just relate in cold, hard facts the story off their life but presents vignettes - little captured moments that illustrate important aspects of their life together, or its context against the background events of the day: World War 2, the invention of the atomic and nuclear bombs, political changes in England, even the introduction of the motor car. Briggs has also invested himself emotionally in the book - you see his parents joy at his birth, their disappointment ass he ants to be an artist, and you even get a glimpse of a very sad, poignant moment in the last panel as the author looks back on his parents life.

This is the only book I can think of that I have ever shed a tear after reading, but it was so good that I bought a copy for my father and have since given away as gifts a number of other copies. I can safely say that I consider this one of the best books that I own.