Agrippina's grandmother goes awol for a few days, only to be discovered in her own home, hiding away from the world while she recovers from a facelift. And all because she's found out that her own mother has gone into a retirement home. The latter, having made herself a fortune in her savvy investments in stocks and shares, decides to buy herself a computer... but not just any old computer...! Meanwhile, Agrippina is, as usual, busy seeking out any opportunity to get easy money and easy boys. This is a side-splitting snapshot of the complex relationships between four generations of women.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this ebook.

Agrippina started out well but at some point, it deviated completely from the path I expected it to go. The characters were not likable and the words were very hard to read.

I did not finish this book. First off it was a bit hard to read. The illustrators chose to use cursive and my digital galley was just not clear enough. Then the story really wasn't doing it for me. The family dynamic where kids didn’t even know they had a great-grandma because of family striff saddens me. Then when the great granddaughter is just trying to get money out of great grams it pisses me off. This is not a family dynamic I want to read about. I am sure there will be plenty of people who like it, I am just not one of them.

Life is far too short to struggle with that kind of cursive font. Unreadable - and I bet, from my impression of the rest - not worth anything like the effort.

A family "comedy" I didn't find at all funny with terrible art and lettering. This was just plain awful.

Agrippina is a delightful introduction to the soft but poignant humor of Bretecher. The French cartoonist is rightly famous for depicting a world that makes sense to so many France. What is a great surprise is that she crosses boundaries easily and a reader will see this as speaking to them and their experiences directly. I can't recommend this book enough.

This is my first Agrippina. I just can't get the humor. Not only it is quite difficult to read those cursive/handwriting font, but also some characters are weird. The story about four generation of women were ruined by the computer chapters. I might need to read the first installment to know Agrippina and her family better.

I really could not get on with this graphic novel. The illustrations were ok, and colourful, but not my favoured style. What really put me off was the font. It is a kind of cursive/handwriting and so hard to follow without really having to try hard. I felt that it was too much work and the plot wasn't good enough to make me fight through this hurdle.

Thanks again to Europe Comics for another ARC.

'Agrippina and the Ancestor' with story and art by Claire Bretecher is a series of comic vignettes.

Agrippina has a grandmother in a home. She also is part of a pretty dysfunctional family. They visit grandmother, but get interrupted when it's snacktime. Agrippina tries to con money out of her grandmother, but finds out that the aged can still be crafty. Grandmother also buys a computer, but the computer has an odd side effect.

It's all pretty silly and the art has a fun, frantic quality to it. I found the computer story a bit too silly for my tastes, but I liked the story in the first half of the book.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Europe Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

I'm a fan of Claire Bretécher and always liked Agrippina.
It's humorous and realistic description of a dysfunctional family. The humour is quite sophisticated and I think it can be a bit hard to appreciate.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Many moons ago I read short magazine cartoons by Claire Brétecher (Les Frustrés) and immensely enjoyed them. This I did not! Don’t get the ”French” humour, plot forgettable, font unreadable, strange colouring of people, non-sensical block poems between parts of story. All very unenjoyable.

I thought the first half was better than the second but overall I enjoyed this book. I liked the imperfect family dynamic and a lot of the great grandmother's scenes and dialog was quite humorous. I loved 'snack time' and I loved the back and forth between her and her friend while eating etc. The teeth jokes were great. I also liked the use of colours in the illustrations to portray emotion or intensity throughout the story.

However, although I love cursive and it is a very pretty font, I do think it would make the book less readable for some. The block letter text had the same problem, a lot of which didn't appear to have any spacing.