Ethel & Ernest - Softcover

Briggs, Raymond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224046624 ISBN 13: 9780224046626

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 1998

Synopsis

Utterly original, deeply moving and very funny, Ethel & Ernest is the story of Raymond Brigg`s parents' marriage, from their first chance encounter to their deaths told in Brigg`s unique strip-cartoon format. Nothing is invented, nothing embroidered - this is the reality of two decent, ordinary lives of two people who, as Briggs tells the story, become representative of us all. The book is also social history; we see the dark days of the Second World War, the birth of the Welfare State, the advent of television and all the changes which were so exhilarating and bewildering for Ethel and Ernest.

A marvellous, life-enhancing book for all ages.

About this title

Review:

Raymond Briggs has used his parents in his work before. They were the archetypes for the bemused elderly couple in his fable of nuclear war, When The Wind Blows, and in lighter vein his father has been the model for Father Christmas. But in this latest work Briggs takes it a step further in writing (and, of course, drawing) a cartoon strip biography of his parents marriage from courtship in the twenties to death in the seventies. This tribute to ordinary lives--no affairs, no illness before the end, no regrets--is inevitably a very personal work, but also serves as a fascinating social history. From when they meet as milkman and parlour maid, through the Depression, second world war, childbirth (Briggs himself gets a particularly good cameo role in the sixties, replete with magnificent sideburns), old age and death, we see a world in rapid flux while Ethel and Earnest's loving relationship remains resolutely stable. The drawings are characteristically tender--the scene when his dead mother lies on a hospital trolley is particularly moving--and the simple text gives more than a taste of these people and the times they lived through. Sentimental as well as engaging? Absolutely. But work like this gives sentimentality a good name. --Nick Wroe

Review:

"Briggs has always had the ability to move his readers, but never more powerfully than this." (Stephen Pritchard Guardian)

"As our memory of pre-Niketown Britain fades, we should be grateful that Raymond Briggs is so brilliantly equipped to remind us of what we used to be, and why." (Nick Hornby New York Times)

"Ethel & Ernest imparts, as the best novels do, the sense of lived lives. It’s not too much to say you come to love these people... Briggs’ book earns our tears. Ethel & Ernest is a just about perfect miniature: small in scale, not in spirit." (Charles Taylor Salon)

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0224046624
• ISBN 13: 9780224046626
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104