The comic book "A Family in London" tells the true story of the author's family after World War I and the Great Depression

It is said that this book has been made into a movie and should really be seen.

Author: Zhang Ning (China Feng Zikai Award winner, picture book writer)

The London Family, Raymond Briggs, CITIC Press

The London Family is the true story of the author Raymond Briggs' family. From the end of World War I, when his parents fell in love, it spanned important historical periods such as the Great Depression, World War II, and the financial austerity that followed, as well as the cultural new wave of the 1960s. For a couple, these 40 years of time is the whole time they spend together, and it just so happens that they live in an extraordinary city like London.

After flipping through the book twice, I seemed to see a picture of a movie flowing in front of my eyes, and the frame frame picture was like a storyboard of a movie, smooth and moving. It is said that this book has been made into a movie and should really be seen. However, I think That Briggs is a novelist's narrative, using pictures to write such a long story, the time is very delicately allocated, and it is intriguing. It made me, who also loved to draw, want to tell this story in words, like describing an old house, so that everyone could see its beautiful structure and those functional exquisite decorations.

Opening from 1928 to 1930, the couple's two-year love affair is condensed by the author into several interlocking scenes: Monday through Saturday, the milkman (the future father) gallops through the streets and slows down downstairs at the maid (future mother) master. The girl's yellow kitchen towel echoed the yellow hat and scarf of the young man downstairs, and my mood became relaxed with my father's confident and uninhibited image (the image of a cyclist in a classic movie), and I felt depressed with my mother's restraint and the image of being confined to the window frame. The personalities of the two set the tone from the beginning, and their family situation is clear to the reader from the two pictures and dialogue. It turns out that their personalities come from their respective life backgrounds.

The authors begin the first important period of their life together, from 1930 to 1940. From the perspective of the world situation, this was a tense period between the Great Depression before World War II and the political situation before the war, and the differences in the personalities and political positions of fathers and mothers were more clearly revealed. Supported by their father's optimistic attitude towards life, the couple bought the house they were about to live in for 41 years, the first time that the old house appeared in front of the reader, the father put his left hand on his mother's left shoulder, and the two wore military trench coats (it was popular in the 1930s, and in the movie "Broken Blue Bridge", which took place in London during the First World War, Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor wore such trench coats). The sign of the house for sale stands in front of the house, the blue sky and white clouds, and the birds fly among the clouds. His father, who has lived in poverty since childhood, has transformed all parts of the family with a pair of skillful hands, and the tables, chairs, sofas and dressers purchased by his father have also appeared one by one, which must be the author's most affectionate sustenance. It was also in this bed that the mother struggled to give birth to her son... Her father was a supporter of the Labour Party, and her mother's personality determined her bias towards the conservative party. The two-party struggle, in the politics of this period, is your side singing and I appear. Chamberlain's policy of appeasement and Hitler's Transfiguration made the couple unable to distinguish between right and wrong, but was this not the collective confusion of that era? The implementation of the two-party struggle at home is the real people's livelihood, and the couple is most concerned about the matter. However, the war finally came at the end of the decade, only 20 years after the last war. The son was placed in a relatively safe country, and the father and son were separated.

Between 1940 and 1950, the war caused many changes inside and outside the house: the windows were covered with shatterproof tape and a hood to prevent light leakage at night, the father built a temporary air-defense bunker in the yard, and the tables inside the house were converted into anti-aircraft bunkers. The bomb still came, and the old house appeared in the eyes of the reader for the second time, full of devastation. The sky is still blue, the birds are flying, and above the white clouds float a string of huge white airballs, which is typical of the london sky during the war. The couple stood in front of the house, their father's left hand still resting on his mother's left shoulder. Towards the end of the war, German air raids on London became more frequent, and the father and son almost died under the V1 missile, a new suicide weapon invented by the German army. The war is still over, the old house is lit up, we see the beautiful blue sky and white clouds, the couple stand in front of the house to celebrate, the father's left hand on the mother's left shoulder, the right hand holding the beer... The victory of the Labour Party made the father happy, but the welfare of the workers was still in vain, and the quarrel between the two ended with the anger and embarrassment of one side. Their son quietly grew up during this decade and chose to study art.

From 1950 to 1960, a new era came, and the son who studied art, the refrigerator, the television, the telephone, the stereo—the arrival of new things was so fast that my father was a little caught off guard. Peacetime quarrels at home revolve more around differences in political opinions, and the relationship between the husband and wife is really like the relationship between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, quarreling non-stop, but no one can leave anyone, but who is better than the other? Believe it or not, how ironic is the discussion between mothers and strangers on the train about the replacement of third-class carriages by second-class carriages!

Between 1960 and 1970, the pace of material life became greater and greater. My father still reads the popular newspapers every day, and there are few disputes with my mother about political positions. What appears in the home is more of an impact from new ideas. As a representative of the new ideas in the family, the son has a large gap with the image of his parents' habits, both in appearance and in his heart. The attire of his son and his new wife was that of the Beatles and Yoko Ono. My daughter-in-law is mentally unstable, and I think of Jenny in another movie, Forrest Gump, which makes people curious about the life of these two people, which is another unknown story. The mother is not accustomed to her son's long hair, and every time she holds a comb, she wants her son to take care of his hair, but the son loudly refuses, leaving the mother to hang her head in frustration. What is even more unacceptable to the mother is the conflict of values. Perhaps the father was more understanding of his son in his choice of house, because when he was young, he also wanted to own a country house.

The year 1970 to 1971 is the end of the whole story, the most affectionate climax. The mother was ill, and the son did not refuse the comb in her hand again in front of the bed. You could say that it was because of the mother's illness, but who can deny that the son's reconciliation with his mother at this time was not based on his own sincere understanding? This section revolves around the mother's illness: she is weak, begins to remember many things, and begins to become like a child. In the absence of the father, the mother quietly asked her son, "Who was that old man just now?" He couldn't even recognize his wife, thinking that his wife was her husband's favorite movie star when he was young. Faced with his mother's illness and final death, the author let his image on the picture sometimes depressed, sometimes desperate. The father's solitary time is the author's imagination: the frame behind him when he calls to tell his son the news of his mother's death, sets up two pairs of dinner plates during meals, talks to himself alone, and faces the pain alone after being sick, and I seem to see a pair of eyes that the author is crying behind the picture. The father died a month after the death of his mother, this time the old house appeared again, the blue sky and white clouds, the sign of the house for sale once again stood in front of the house, the son and daughter-in-law stood in the position of the original parents, the daughter-in-law's right hand was on the son's right shoulder, and at the end of the war, the pear tree planted by the son in the yard had flourished.

As a comic book, "London Family" is beyond my imagination, it brings me the feeling of not a single, my heart is full of mixed tastes. I felt like I was flying over London all night, watching the passage of time and seeing the depths of human affection. Let me conclude with this passage from Calvino's book The Invisible City, for this book belongs not only to the memory of this family, but even to the memory of a great city—"the city does not reveal its past, but hides it like a handprint, it is written in the corners of the streets, the guardrails of the panes, the handrails of the stairs, the antennas and flagpoles of the lightning, and every mark is a trace of scratching, troughing, carving, and slamming." ”

(Original title: Flying over London all night)

Source: Beijing Evening News

EDIT: tf077