From Raymond Briggs, author and illustrator of the beloved book, The Snowman, comes Ethel and Ernest: A True Story. In a rather brief telling, Briggs depicts the courtship and long marriage of his parents, spanning 1928 to 1971. Ethel is a maid; Ernest a milkman. Grounded in the British working class, the pair (and their son) play witnesses to an economic depression, a world war, the global specter of Communism, technological revolutions, and the culture clashing of generations in mid-century. Ethel is particularly sensitive to class distinctions, looking with shame at anything that connotes "commonness" and aspiring for the credibility of office jobs and nice brown shoes. Ernest is an emotive but confused liberal who thrills to news about nationalized social systems and urban greenbelts. "Cor!" he cries upon reading the headlines of the day. His spats with his practical and conservative-leaning wife, are the metronomic beat that keeps time in their long relationship.
Ethel and Ernest is charming
and more expansive than its brief length implies. Time moves in
fascinating ways in this tale; the reader has the experience of peeking in
and out on Ethel and Ernest's lives, without most of the usual markers or transitions to
function as a guide. Instead, swift juxtapositions and telling associations propel us through. The art is marked by bright, kinetic drawing from the young man who alarmed his parents by going to art school, ultimately reaching a predictable but
softening conclusion. A lovely work that risks sentimentality.
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