Breakfast After Noon

by Andi Watson, Jamie S. Rich

Rob Grafton and Louise Bright are in love and engaged to be married. When they unexpectedly find themselves unemployed, marriage plans are derailed and they are forced to rethink the direction of their lives. While Louise turns to school, Rob maintains a staunch desire to regain his old job, but when the company is itself shut down and hope is lost, Rob's depression not only keeps him from finding another job, but ends up repelling Louise, as well. Set in contemporary England, BREAKFAST AFTER NOON is a unique comic-book treat, choosing to focus on the twists and turns of real life rather than convoluted plots or the smoke-and-mirrors of the fantastic.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Slice Of Life, Bande Dessinée, Comix

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Andrew "Andi" Watson (born 1969) is a British cartoonist and illustrator best known for the graphic novels Breakfast After Noon, Slow News Day and his series Love Fights, published by Oni Press and Slave Labor Graphics.

Watson has also worked for more mainstream American comic publishers with some work at DC Comics, a twelve-issue limited series at Marvel Comics, with the majority at Dark Horse Comics, moving recently to Image Comics.

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Minimalistic art, maximum realism, this is a tale of unemployment. Mind you, it's unemployment British style and therefore isn't as terrible as it would be stateside, for example, but still the story does showcase the detrimental effect lack on work can have on a person's life and psyche. Happily, the protagonists of the story, the young couple on the brink of getting married and starting a family, are citizens of the nations determined to take care of their less fortunate and therefore there's financial assistance, employment locating assistance, job training, etc. All so quaint, it almost seems unreal to those residing in places where there isn't much, if any, help to those who stumble and detour on the yellow brick road of adulthood. Unreal...happy ending and all. Cute read, maybe too close to home to genuinely appreciate. Well worth an hour's time, though.

[Anto Tilio · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Hace un tiempo tuve el placer de conocer la obra de Andi Watson con Geisha y quedé totalmente encantada. Cuando vi que este autor se especializaba en el género slice of life (me encanta que se llame así, me recuerda a Dexter) despertó mi curiosidad. Y después de Geisha me quedé con ganas de leer y apreciar más de sus obras. Así que me decidí a leer Desayuno por la tarde, otra de sus primeras historias y me encontré con una pareja que se acaba de quedar sin trabajo debido a la economía turbulenta de la epoca. Robb y Louise trabajaban en una fabrica de vajilla de porcelana y estaban planificando su boda. El paro los ataca de forma diderente a los dos, él quiere recuperar su trabajo y termina en un bajón. Ella quiere seguir adelante, volver a capacitarse y conseguie un nuevo trabajo. Las actitudes de la pareja ante esta situación los termina alejando, pero la vida da muchas vueltas y las cosas terminan encausándose de maneras inesperadas.

[João Teixeira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lido na versão espanhola (os portugueses acham que percebem muito bem castelhano, mas a verdade é que quando se trata de linguagem oral, não se compreende tudo tão bem como previamente se suporia)...
Gosto deste tipo de "crónica de costumes dos tempos modernos", mas tive alguma dificuldade em sentir simpatia pela personagem principal. Em todo o caso, acho que as personagens estão bem construídas, o argumento é interessante, enfim, um livro que tem uma boa história sobre a alienação no mundo actual e a dificuldade que é ser adulto. Vale a pena ler.

[Amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't understand British slang.

[Electra · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'en parle demain sur mon blog !

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rob and Louise are engaged and looking forward to their wedding day, but a wrench is thrown into their plans when the pottery factory that Rob works at lays him off. Initially, the couple work through the sudden shift in their life, but Rob's own insecurity at being unable to secure a new job or pay for the small things begins to eat away at their relationship. Breakfast After Noon is a fairly interesting look into relationships, particularly from a contemporary lens of middle class income insecurity. Andi Watson's presentation of Rob's crumbling psyche is nuanced and subtle, showing that his mental emaciation is a gradual one that builds up from repeated interactions with his friends and fiancée. Despite this, the majority of characters here don't really get much of the same treatment, so this is just a pretty narrow character-focused story that doesn't really maintain a strong sense of momentum over the entire length of the narrative. It's functional and the realism works for it well, but overall I can't really say this book had too much to say about the nature of unemployment.

Watson's artwork is pretty subdued and minimalistic, mostly working to be a functional way of telling the story. Rob's growing unkemptness is delivered well through the artwork, but outside of that I can't really say the art did much for me. It's pleasing enough to look at, though the art really exists to be economically rendered. This is a solid read, even if it isn't the most memorable one.

[Elisala]

Bon, hé bien, je ne suis pas fan du dessin: des traits nets, mais avec des essais de dessin réaliste qui ne lui conviennent pas du tout (des traits de contrariété en trait net, ça fait poire, je trouve).
Par ailleurs, l'intrigue elle-même ne présente pas énormément de surprise, c'est une histoire déjà connue en quelque sorte, c'est dommage pour l'auteur, mais le cinéma s'est déjà suffisamment intéressé à ce sujet: le chômage en Angleterre, le couple qui en souffre, la femme assume, le mari moins.
Et puis le schéma de l'histoire n'est pas renversant d'originalité: ça va mal, ça va de plus en plus mal et puis hop deus ex machina, tout va bien ou presque, et ils vécurent heureux et eurent au moins un enfant.

[Caleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything about this short graphic is clear and expressive. The story captures the quagmire of unemployment, the personal frustrations and tolls it takes on individuals in a direct and evocative manner. The artwork is similarly direct. Line and shade is used to great effect for a clean and simple aesthetic that is again, wonderfully evocative.

It's a slice of life that capture the domestic drama and stress of unemployment and the emotional and psychological decline that can accompany it. At times it can feel lackluster but to me it the boggy milieu of the characters seeping into the storytelling. It was a careful story that is worth commitment.

[Irene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much British slang and profanity for me to understand, and I did not particularly like the art style or plot. I do think it's a matter of personal preference and not a lack of merit in the book, however, so perhaps someone who enjoys British slice-of-life style comics would really like it. I just found it hard to relate to the protagonists, constantly smoking, being obsessed with soccer, not willing to work after being laid off, etc.

*2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge
Prompt #35: A book in a different format than what you normally read - graphic novel/comics/slice-of-life

[B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because my husband had them but so far I've only found 4 of the singles. Not quite honest or fair to give 3 stars without reading it all, I know. The story is simple, but when a lot of time passes the way Andi Watson portrays that passage is confusing. I had the same issue with Skeleton Key. Overall, it's the kind of thing that doesn't leave much of an impression.

[Jenn Estepp · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2. Pretty sure I read this back in the day, but found a copy when I was weeding the libraries graphic novels and decided to revisit. There is no doubt that the perspective of age and experience probably influenced my reaction. Watson's art style isn't my totally my favorite, but still.

[Mirko Liang · Rating 2 out of 5]

Back in my university days, I used to read lots of graphic novels from the city library, exploring stuff I would have never given a single glance at the comicbook store. I remember thinking 'Ok, this is different'. Enjoyed it overall.

[Stephanie Racette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Août 2025. C’était correct, mais assez convenu, sans surprise. Un mec bien looser, une fin positive, l’ensemble assez cliché.
Le travail graphique était bien.
Bref, rien d’extraordinaire mais j’ai quand même passé un moment de lecture sympathique.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the drawing style with thick, dark lines that made facial expressions come alive. But the story was lackluster and disappointingly uncohesive ending left a bit to be desired.

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historia de una pareja afectada por la caída de la industria de la porcelana. Cuando la pobreza entra por la puerta...

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lecture en français.
Une critique sociale classique mais efficace, avec un trait sympathique et une ambiance bien british.

[Mauricio Díaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voy

[taketwolu · Rating 3 out of 5]

After losing their jobs, Rob and Louise go through a rough patch. It was hard to watch the two struggle -- Louise turned to school while Rob's depression grew deeper as he failed to put effort into finding a new job. I found Rob to be especially frustrating as he held onto the past and inevitably pushed Louise away --but I can understand where he’s coming from. The art style was fun and it did a good job of capturing life’s unpredictability.

[Erin WV · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this one up at random as a graphic novel worth reading for a month-long genre challenge. I read it immediately after Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, which did not do it any favors.

Breakfast After Noon is a slice-of-life type novel, like one of those British “kitchen sink” movies where it’s all static talk and subtle emotional shifts. Makes sense, because the author is British. (A man, incidentally, even though the “I” ending to his name threw me at first. That’s how girls spell it, dude.) Anyway, there’s this couple who are engaged and attempting to withstand unemployment after the factory they both worked in goes into bankruptcy. The young man is utterly bereft—he was a skilled worker, a tradesman, and basically doesn’t want to have to learn to do anything else. He wants the old factory to open back up. Or for another factory to hire him back to do exactly the same work. This continues to not work out, so he just plays video games and drinks a lot. The young woman is more pragmatic about things, goes on “the dole” and learns to use a computer. Differences of opinion, growing apart, etc. etc.

It was an interesting story, if you like relationship-as-action, which I generally do. I read this in one sitting and felt a connection to the characters, I think. (Though I think she was totally right and he was totally wrong.) Still, I honestly wondered all the way through why this needed to be a graphic novel at all. I mean, I guess the choice of one medium or another is not a conscious one; an artist wants to create something and creates it in the medium which is most loved or most accessible to him or her. Watson is an artist and chose to draw this story rather than arrange it through words only.

I just don’t know that anything was gained through the images; certainly not in the way images fed into the themes of Persepolis. In Breakfast After Noon, I did appreciate seeing the slouchy hair on the male protagonist; I got an immediate sense of his personality from his slouchy hair. So I guess that was useful.

[Tiamatty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good comic. It's about an engaged couple who get laid off from the ceramics factory they both work at, and their struggles that result, both financially and romantically. The woman takes training to find a new job, the guy is determined to get another job in the same field, even though there are no jobs open. So he mostly stays at home watching TV and playing video games. He stops taking care of himself, and becomes depressed, which is what causes the problems with his relationship.

The job loss element definitely hit home for me. I know how much it sucks to be unable to find a job in your field. It doesn't take long to lose hope and give up. I never got as bad as the character here, but I can understand how he got so bad. The story is very real, something that a lot of people go through. The characters felt real. The art was fine - simple, but sufficiently expressive.

It's a good comic.

[D.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of only two (I think) Andi Watson books I own, and this one is the apex of what I like about his stuff. The story in Breakfast After Noon is regrettably familiar and sadly all too believable; in spite of the clean lines and late-deco stylism of Watson's work, this is grimly realistic storytelling worthy of Mike Leigh.
Watson lays it on (I hope) a little too heavily from time to time (can anyone REALLY be as much a tool as Rob? and why?), and his main characters bear unfortunately Dickensian surnames (she's Bright and the leeching he is Grafton), but it's all in service to the story. This is nothing epic, and there are few lessons to learn, but Watson's done a superb job of portraying real people in a typically dumb situation. Too bad it plays out like it probably would in reality.

[Alex Sarll]

Not the sort of story I normally go for - a couple fray after both are made redundant - but Andi Watson does this stuff so well. And he perfectly captures a particular strain of Midlands masculinity - the blokes who joined the town's default employer straight from school, and think they're terribly practical when in fact they've just lived life on rails. Which means they completely crumble when those rails disappear from under them, all the while making out there's no alternative. Not people of whom I'd normally care to be reminded, but even when Rob's at his most truculently useless, those warm Watson lines meant I still cared about his fate.

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Rob and Louisa, a young British couple engaged to be married, both lose their jobs, the strength of their bonds is sorely tested. I liked Andi Watson's angular drawings and the authentic voices of the characters; Watson portrayed Rob's and Louisa's very different responses to being unemployed with empathy and honesty. However, I was very turned off by the pat, simplistic conclusion to a story that often betrayed a much darker (and more realistic) worldview. So, only 2.5 stars.

[James Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this series of excellent comics at my local bookstore (Southcart books in Walsall) a stone's throw away from the potteries.

This is a painfully realistic painting of modern Britain and a compelling read. It captures the loneliness and desperation of redundancy and job seeking.
It shows the self pity and the slow lingering death of pride and hope.

It's not a cheery read but life isn't always brilliant, there doesn't always have to be a happy ending.

[Ffiamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

la crisi industriale del regno unito, una fabbrica di porcellane che chiude e due ragazzi prossimi al matrimonio costretti a rivedere la loro vita in seguito alla disoccupazione. mi ha ricordato un po' i film di ken loach, disegni davvero carini, essenziali.
[una mezza stella in più per il valore affettivo che ha questo libro per me]

[Zen Cho · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I wasn't sure if the writer was British -- the dialogue felt sort of off to me -- and that threw me off, but I liked it once I got into it. I got quite invested in the characters. But I don't think they should've got back together. >:(

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good graphic novel. A strong look at how unemployment can affect people and how difficult it can be to find your footing after a fall. I especially like the very stark art of Andi Watson, all black and white and very sharp lines that just guide the eye easily into the story.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

great read. andi watson's art and writing might be the best there is on the comics market.
this could almost be an english textbook, there are so many idioms from the mother country you need the glossary supplied in the back of the book.

[Adam Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, just beautiful. The artwork is simplistic, expressive and rich. I think this is the most thorough work done by Andi Watson, and really everything else he's put out since lacks the elegance of Breakfast Afternoon. He's an auteur in this one.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the British slang and out-of-job working class money desperation. I could relate to the guilt over going out for Thai with friends. I couldn't relate to wondering whether you're only good at one thing - pottery assembly. But I liked that mix of relatable and somewhat foreign.