Review: Our House is on Fire by Malena and Beata Ernman, and Svante and Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg is a name that will be instantly recognisable to many people across the globe thanks to her work in environmental and climate change activism. Our House is on Fire is, in one part, the behind the scenes biography of her complex family life, and the events that led her toward activism. In another, it has a lot of information about the family's beliefs, passion and desire to make a difference. 

Narrated by Malena Ernman, the biography tells of her life as an opera singer who made a living travelling and working throughout Europe and how things began to change suddenly when her oldest daughter, Greta stopped eating and spoke very little. Their family life improves after both of her daughters, Greta and Beata are given formal diagnosis and find ways to convert their so-called problems into superpowers, and how Greta converts her concerns about climate change into an unstoppable call to arms, through messages that made their way right across the globe. Beata, meanwhile, is forging her own musical career, but often struggles with being in the shadow of her sister.

And all of this is in the shadow of what they consider to be a huge, global emergency.

This was an interesting and insightful read that made me think more about the way we often treat people, especially those who think and act differently, and the huge differences many of those people can make when they have the opportunity to have their voices heard. It also made me give considerable thought to climate change, and the need for systematic change, instead of the feel good exercises and responses that we so often get instead. This one isn't always easy reading, but it certainly is informative.

Recommended.


Comments

Ethan said…
This sounds like such a powerful story! I'm obviously aware of Greta, but I didn't realize how her crusade came to be. What a story!
7 August 2022 at 10:40
Kathryn White said…
Thanks Ethan. This one really is an eye opener. She and her family have all led such interesting lives.
10 August 2022 at 17:45
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more