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Ethel & Ernest: Amazon.co.uk: Briggs, Raymond: 9780224046626: Books

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Ethel & Ernest Paperback – 3 Sept. 1998

by Raymond Briggs (Author)

4.8 658 ratings

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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.

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Print length

104 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Jonathan Cape
Publication date

3 Sept. 1998
Dimensions

15.1 x 0.9 x 22.5 cm
ISBN-10

9780224046626
ISBN-13

978-0224046626
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Product description

Amazon 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)

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0224046624
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jonathan Cape; 1st edition (3 Sept. 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 104 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780224046626
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224046626
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.1 x 0.9 x 22.5 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 103,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 121 in Animation (Books)
- 253 in Cartooning
- 311 in Cultural History of London

Customer reviews:
4.8 658 ratings

About the author

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Raymond Briggs

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Raymond Redvers Briggs (born 18 January 1934) is an English illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist and author who has achieved critical and popular success among adults and children. He is best known in Britain for his story The Snowman, a book without words whose cartoon adaptation is televised and whose musical adaptation is staged every Christmas.

Briggs won the 1966 and 1973 Kate Greenaway Medals from the British Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. For the 50th anniversary of the Medal (1955–2005), a panel named Father Christmas (1973) one of the top-ten winning works, which composed the ballot for a public election of the nation's favourite.

For his contribution as a children's illustrator Briggs was a runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1984.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5

658 global ratings

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Breathtakingly ordinary.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 January 2024

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Every life is drama heat warming and tragic. Briggs has epitomized it here. Great literature. Honest, true, loving kind. Impressive.

Ethel and Ernest

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 October 2023

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Lovely book, the story could have been about my own parents, so a deep sense of nostalgia.

Sympathetic and uplifting autobiographical family story - with wondrous illustrations.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 June 2018

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This is an absolutely wonderful and uplifting book. The story is a simple one; his parents meeting, marrying and then living a fairly typical family life with the author as their one and only son. This loving story is interwoven with some of the major world and national events that took place between the 1930s and 1970s, including a world war, landing on the moon and the arrival of the NHS.
There is something very powerful about the simple text, mixed with a large dose of humour between the husband and wife, coupled with images that make the experience of reading this book into something very special.
This is undoubtedly a book to savour and read many times (it can be read in an hour).

3 people found this helpful

Out of the Ordinary

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 March 2017

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Stirred a variety of deeply personal emotions and prompted recognition of values and social mores I subscribed to and totally accepted many years ago. It triggered too haunting memories of wartime when I was a three year old cowering in an Anderson shelter in the back garden. This everyday story of a small working class family played out against a background of momentous world and national events is in turn uplifting, humorous and often tear jerking.
This beautifully illustrated small book captures the highs and lows of lives so ordinary that they become compulsive reading. It captures vividly the ageing of loved ones, their loss and the resulting unfillable void for those left behind. Ethel and Ernest also struck a chord with my twelve year old grandson who was captivated and moved by this unfolding of mundane but unforgettable lives as opposed to his usual diet of super heroes, time lords or teenage wizards.

9 people found this helpful

The story of YOUR life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2014

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I've grown up with Raymond Briggs' books and have never read a dull thing by him. Yet "Ethel and Ernest" is something else all together. In telling the story of his parents' lives, and how he entered the picture, he makes their fairly ordinary lives seem extraordinary and makes any reader feel there is part of their life in there somewhere. Indeed, my grandfather's name was Ernest and he looked quite like Ernest Briggs does on the cover.
There's so much to relate to in the book. There's good memories, like when you played games or sang silly songs as a child, went down to the beach or moved up to "big" school. Raymond, it seems, did all those too. Read about how Ethel always fusses over him as mothers always will, while Ernest moderates as fathers always will. Even the hard times, like scolding, embarrassments and arguments, are relatable.
There's another side of the book too. Ethel and Ernest's life together began in the 1920's and ended in the 1970's (you'd have to be made of stone not to be moved by the ending). Follow that life as they (and Raymond) go through enormous changes and end up in a world that was unimaginable at the start of the book. There's WWII of course, the fear of the nuclear shadow, the appearance of television, the moon landing; changes that can be delivered either soberly or humorously. There's a page where Ernest reads in his trusty newspaper that they're going to legalise homosexuality... but he doesn't really know what that is!
So funny, so wonderful, so sad and so much like life. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

9 people found this helpful

The Advantage of being Ernest...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 October 2005

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...A nice house, new furniture, and a lovely wife! What more could anyone want? Although Ernest and his wife were the models for Jim and Hilda in "When the Wind Blows", they are spared the violence and devastation of a nuclear holocaust and allowed to see out their days in peace (despite an ill-placed Morrison shelter almost doing for them during World War 2).
Briggs' portrait of his parents is a strange book - without real plot or narrative, it jumps from one situation to another in a disjointed and unique style, capturing small vignettes of twentieth century life but never quite expanding on them. There is no commentary or moralising, no idyllic or disasterous childhoods, no extolling of the values of family life or solidarity during the Blitz or respect for one's elders - just a series of snapshots of married life, mortgages, ancient washing machines, political disputes (Ernest is a staunch socialist, Ethel an unreconstructed Tory) and hospital endings.
Briggs is probably the best cartoonist Britain has to offer outside politics; his simple drawings have been used for everything from traditional Bogeymen to the horrors of nuclear war, and still retain the fresh innocence that made the "Snowman" so great. It's this style which allows him to make such striking statements, and which got him onto last year's Christmas stamps.
A bit like "Maus" without the backdrop of the Holocaust to focus the attention, it is Briggs' most daring work yet. In the way he has chosen to portray their lives he captures the banality of the lives of Ernests and Ethels everywhere. It's worth a look, but don't expect a simple story.

4 people found this helpful

Saw the retrospective at Bowes Museum

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 December 2022

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Wanted to see one of RB's books that I had not seen. Great art and a wonderful story. Read it.

One person found this helpful

really good love it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 October 2023

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the film is brilliant too as well as the book 5 stars

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Marta

Beautiful

Reviewed in Spain on 21 March 2022

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Lunch Lady

Excellent Story

Reviewed in Canada on 19 February 2020

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The film is also available, I got it from my library. Great story, so many things my parents had talked about growing up. It gets a little graphic at the end, so I taped those pages closed so my mom didn't read them. Excellent condition.

The GoggleMan_JP

真正面から描かれた平凡

Reviewed in Japan on 18 September 2022

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ちょうど１００ページ。基本的に１エピソード１〜２ページというペースで進んでいく。エピソードの中には、時間にすればほんの１分にも満たないであろうものもある。そう聞くと、およそ５０年をという歳月を描く物語としては、駆け足に過ぎるのではないかと思われるかもしれないが、決してそんなことはない。仕事と暮らし、恋愛や子育て、戦時下の現実、若さと老い、そして死。そういった場面の端々にある人生の小さなディテールが、情景を立体的に浮かび上がらせ、過不足ないばかりか、容赦無く心を掻き乱してくる。

この作品の素晴らしさは、平凡について正直なところだ。平凡な人生の中にある喜びを堂々と慈しむ一方で、煩わしさや忌々しさも隠さない。単なるノスタルジアやセンチメントになることを拒絶し、何かしら教訓めいたものを示すでも共感を誘うでもなく、ありのままを淡々と描くことに潔癖であろうとしている。故に胸を打つ。その感動は、結果に向かって直線的に連なる物語がもたらすそれとは、違う類のものだ。ひとつひとつは小さな点が集まり、大きな面になって迫ってくる感覚と言えば良いだろうか。

ブリッグス先生独特の温かみのある絵柄に油断してたら、ぺしゃんこに押し潰されてしまった。

One person found this helpful

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D. J. Goyne

A beautiful, deeply moving book.

Reviewed in Australia on 16 March 2022

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This is a fantastic book telling the story of the author’s Mum and Dad’s lives. Full of the ordinariness of ordinary lives, even if extraordinary times are happening around them, but this ordinariness is suffused with love and heart and truth. It is nostalgic but never mawkish. Reading will bring you to tears if your heart is not a stone.

de Löw

Zeitlos, warmherzig und anrührend

Reviewed in Germany on 21 January 2017

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Ich habe das Buch inzwischen mehrfach gekauft und alle bis auf ein Exemplar verschenkt. Briggs zeichnet (in mehrfachem Sinne) das Leben seiner Eltern nach. Zwischen den Bildern zeichnet er auch seine Beziehung zu ihnen. Eine sehr warme Beziehung, wie auch die Beziehung seiner Eltern zueinander liebevoll, zugewandt und von tiefer Wärme gekennzeichnet war. (Hier mag sich manch einer aufregen, dass an einigen Stellen [zum Beispiel wenn es um Technik geht] Ernest doch etwas auf Ethel herabzuschauen scheint. "Ach, Ethel, das verstehst du jetzt nicht..." Ich halte die Aufregung für völlig unangebracht. Ich erkenne darin kein Macho-Gehabe.)
Einfache Leute, die ein Leben ohne große Sprünge und ohne tiefe Brüche in Zuneigung gelebt haben.
Ältere Leser werden sich an einzelne Phasen erinnern: wirtschaftliche Veränderungen, technischer Fortschritt. Das erste Fernsehgerät, Autos werden für viele erschwinglich.
Für Menschen, die sich für den Alltag in England im Lauf der Zeit interessieren, bietet das Buch schöne Fundstellen, die so in kaum einem Schulbuch stehen. Sehens- und lesenswert auch die Zeit des Weltkrieges.
Vielleicht gibt es besondere Momente, in denen man einen speziellen Zugang zu dem Buch findet. Die bislang letzte, der ich "Ethel & Ernest" schenkte, war eine Kollegin, deren Mutter gerade gestorben war - mit knapp achtzig Jahren. Sie hat viele Stationen des Lebens ihrer Eltern wiedererkannt und das hat sie sehr angenehm berührt und zu vielen Überlegungen über ihr eigenes Leben veranlasst.
Das Buch hat ihr auch den Zugang zu Graphic Novels etwas erleichtert. Das, was Briggs sagen und darstellen will, das hat er hier in die optimale Form gegossen. Das würde ich als Roman kaum lesen mögen, doch hier sind Worte und Bilder wunderbar zusammengeführt.
"Ethel & Ernest" ist in Großbritannien schon eine Art zeitloser Klassiker - vollkommen zu Recht.

2 people found this helpful

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