Ethel & Ernest

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En apenas 120 páginas, el autor nos hace cogerle un cariño especial a esta peculiar pareja. Al principio me estaba pareciendo una historia corriente, pero gana muchísimo en su segunda mitad; con la II Guerra Mundial terminada, ha logrado hacerme reír mucho, a carcajadas en algunos momentos, y eso en un libro y en mi caso es poco corriente. Liz died in 2015. He is survived by her children, Clare and Tom, and grandchildren, Connie, Tilly and Miles.

This graphic memoir/ biography is about the author's parents from the time they met in the 1920s until their deaths in the 1970s. Ethel worked as a chambermaid, Ernest a milkman, and this is the story of their life together during the large and small political and social changes of their day in Britain. This was such a short and sweet book and I enjoyed every aspect of it from the storyline, the illustrations and how grateful we are as human beings when parents try and make the life of their children better than what they went through. Their son became a famous illustrator and author and never had to live below poverty level or be a working class. It was sad how they both died and I am glad that Raymond chose to honor them in his book. Julia MacRae, Briggs' editor, finds it an astounding work. She says: "It's a fearless book. Who would do that? Most people would shy away from revealing so much of themselves. It must have been so hard to do." Such prejudices, still not entirely eradicated today, were commonplace at art schools of the time. Although he bemoaned his tutors’ failure to recognise a “natural illustrator”, the formal training that he received imbued in Briggs a strong sense of structure and of the importance of good draughtsmanship. These equipped him well in book illustration, although he left the Slade with what he saw as a poor sense of colour and a dislike of paint. When he eventually arrived at the film version of The Snowman, he expressed pleasure at how it so faithfully and painstakingly replicated his coloured-pencil technique, despite the massively labour-intensive approach that this necessitated.Nevertheless, the children of his long-term partner, Liz Benjamin, provided inspiration and source material for other projects, notably The Puddleman (2004), which grew from a remark made by one of the young children on passing a puddle while the family were out walking in the countryside. I loved the art and colors in this one, and was delighted by the clear affection the author has for his parents. It was fun to read about the couple's dynamics, and this is a wonderful tribute to them. For Robin Shaw, who has directed a number of animations based on Briggs' books, there was a clear impact on his work.

But perhaps the most powerful motivation was a hatred of injustice by authority toward the powerless and naively respectful common man. The latter could be seen most directly in When the Wind Blows (1982), Briggs’s examination of an elderly couple’s attempts to follow government guidelines as nuclear war breaks out; and The Tin-Pot General and the Old Iron Woman (1984), a thinly disguised General Leopoldo Galtieri and Margaret Thatcher.Ethel and Ernest follows the lives of Raymond Briggs' parents throughout the decades, with each section divided into 10 year chunks. The story opens when they first meet, Ethel is a ladies maid and spots Ernest on his bike; he looks up and notices her at the window, and the rest, they say, is history. Ethel leaves her job and they set up home together. For author and illustrator Posy Simmonds, there is an immense power to Briggs' storytelling approach. The characteristic that the journalist John Walsh described in a 2012 interview as a very English “strenuous curmudgeonliness” had become in later years a stereotype that Briggs embraced, exemplified by his column in the Oldie, Notes from the Sofa, collected in book form in 2015, where he would rail against sundry incomprehensible aspects of modern life.

Park says: "They only had a clip ready and they showed it as a treat at the London Film Festival. I remember hearing about it and I was so thrilled to see it. For me it was like a dream come true - I was just so hoping it would reflect his original comic book artwork and it did. It was a real groundbreaker." Met deze strip sloot ik de cyclus van de vier graphic novels/strips, die autobiografisch of sterk autobiografische elementen bevatten, af: The Snowman, Gentleman Jim, When the Wind Blows en deze. The story takes place in London, England from the 1920s through 1971. We meet Ethel who is a maid who one day she sees a man from the window who is riding a bike. He waves at her and she blushes that a man is paying attention to her. He tells her that his name is Ernest and then asks her out to go watch a movie. After that encounter they become a couple and soon enough they get married. She quits her job and becomes a house wife while Ernest works as a milkman. We enter the 1930s and the times are rough during these period because of high unemployment, recuperating from WWI, and economic depression. Bij het einde pinkte ik (opnieuw) een traan. Zo'n leven lang samen en alles wat daarbij aan liefde, leed en geschiedenis passeert maakt het verhaal ook wat melancholisch, maar op een fijne manier. Met subtiele humor en oh zo liefdevol getekend.

Although they have differing political views and many marital squabbles, they obviously deeply care for each other.

There were some funny moments but I also didn't get a lot of the jokes, language, or historical references when they referred to England. The illustrations were beautiful and reminiscent of Briggs' other masterpiece, The Snowman, and the ending was very, very poignant. Ethel e Ernest è un fumetto che sa di casa in ogni pagina; si possono sentire le risate, le discussioni, i rumori dei lavori, il profumo del cibo, l’acqua che scorre, le risate di un bambino.

Short story about the author's parents. We see a little bit of how they court, buy a home and build their dreams in it, how they form a family. Apparently, the author's parents were already up in age when they met and married and his mom was only able to have one child or run the risk of dying if she were to attempt to have more children. Creo que no me equivoco si digo que casi nadie sería capaz de recordar demasiado del argumento de la película ‘Up!’, pero que quienes la vimos recordamos muy nítidamente los primeros minutos en los que, a modo casi de cortometraje paralelo al film, se narra la vida de un matrimonio en unas pocas escenas y se condensa en algunos minutos una preciosa e inolvidable historia de amor. Pues, ahora que he leído esta novela gráfica, me resulta difícil creer que quienes escribieran aquella escena no se inspirasen en este librito: como mínimo coincide que ambas historias son las postales que resumen una vida a lo largo de las décadas y están contadas desde una nostalgia dulcísima y un humor lleno de ternura. This story is a memoir of Raymond Briggs' parents living their lives in an extraordinary time. What I enjoyed about this was that it was VERY British (which of course connected with me) and that they felt so 'normal'. This couple isn't famous or wealthy or anything too out of the ordinary, they just have to keep on getting by whilst the wars happen and technology changes and politics shifts all around them. They kind of represent most British people's grandparents I would imagine, or maybe even great-grandparents. They just got on with it, and made it work - they didn't have a choice...