"Ethel & Ernest"

[fiefoe]

I lucked out with this graphics novel too. The story is simple. It's about the lives of a British working class couple between 1928 and 1971, and they happened to be the parents of the author, Raymond Briggs.

There's no narrative. The dialogues alone give us a strong sense of those two people, and their times:
<1928>

• "Am I to understand that you wish to LEAVE us... to get MARRIED to a MAN?"
• "I was NOT a skivvy! I was a LADY's MAID!"
• "I'm going to be MARRIED!" "So am I!"
  

<1930-40>

• "Look! There's a BATHROOM!" "BLIMEY!"
• "FOUR windows in one room!" "It'll cost a fortune for curtains..."
• "You look dapper from ye napper ter yer feet." "ERNEST! Don't sing those dreadful cockney songs!"
• "Cor! Over TWO MILLION unemployed! I'm lucky to be a milkman."
• "This bloke... Adolf Hitler.. It says they're publishing his book over here... MAIN KAMPF, it's called. All the profits are going to the Red Cross."
• "Oh, Ernest! Your card. They get bigger every year. The heart's all PADDED!"
• "Here Et, did you know if you're a Jew in Germany, you're forbidden to marry a German?" "I'd hate to marry a German."
• "WE'RE NOT WORKING CLASS!"
• (Et on this new-fangled "Tele-vision":) "I suppose it might be all right for the gentry."
• (Young Raymond:) "I wish I had a proper gas mask carrier. Not a soppy old cardboard box and string. It's not fair!"
  
• (Reading their son's letter from the country after he was evacuated there for safety): "Milk not in bottles! Blimey!"
• "If they ALL keep invading one another, WE'LL end up invading someone." "Oh Et! You just don't understand politics."