Finally, a Neil Gaiman book that really agrees with me. Everyone else seems to admire his work so assiduously, but me… it either wasn’t my flavor (American Gods) or I thought it was not very good (The Ocean at the End of the Lane). While I had no idea what was coming to me with The Graveyard Book (technically, children’s) book, I was pleasantly surprised. It is the kind of creepy book that would be great Halloween reading for a middle schooler, but it’s also a book that reads across-ages with its classic feel.

Based on The Jungle Book (or Books, depending on who’s saying it), The Graveyard Book (now I understand the title!) is set in more modern times. The boy in question, instead of Mowgli, is Nobody Owens (Bod for short) and he is not raised in the jungle by animals but in a graveyard by ghosts. It is a series of vignettes, like the original, underscoring coming-of-age lessons as Bod grows from a boy into a young man, but there is also a narrative flowing through like a sleer (consistent with the original). Though he may not remember it, Bod has a past, and his past has not forgotten him or how it wants him dead. But there are friends among the tombstones sworn to protect him and they might know more than they’re saying, but it’s all to keep Bod alive until he can do it himself.

I did say the book was creepy, but this is not true in the way you might think. One of my favorite things about The Graveyard Book is that the usual bad guys are good guys and the usual good guys are bad guys. Not predictably, but my point is that The Graveyard Book turns our assumptions of what is truly scary on its head and we find our favorite heroes among the haunts and witches, while the normal streets of an English city are teeming with the real evil. And Bod learns some of these lessons along with us: just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it should be feared.

I also said this book is vignette-y, which is not really my thing. However, the narrative winding its way through the vignettes really saved it for me. I would have liked a more novel-esque reading experience, but then it wouldn’t be very similar to its source material, and there’s something strangely fresh about the old fashioned feel. There is another thing, though, which I both enjoyed and disliked, simultaneously, and that is the varied ages (not quite the word) of the graveyard ghosts (and other creatures). Since people had been buried in the graveyard since the Celts, there are ghosts from Roman occupation all the way to thirty years before the “present,” and this was fun to think about and to read. Ghosts had different accents, different ways of dressing and doing things, and different ideas about all sorts of things. This plays out in many ways in the book, including Bod’s education and in how the ghosts live one with another. But it also confused my imagination, now and again. It’s hard to keep all the characters in their right accents, clothes, and attitudes when they’re all mashed up like that. I often wanted to just set the whole thing in a Dickens novel, in my head. Hard to keep up. But rewarding.

Though The Graveyard Book gets points for fun imagination, a nod to classic, clear writing, memorable characters, and a slow build of the tension, there are a couple things I could have done without. First, the backmatter. In the copy I have, there’s a very small amount of information about the author and book—very small—and then a super lame question and answer session where either the person asking the questions is clueless as to Gaiman himself or Gaiman is being a buttface, because none of the questions are actually answered, and the diverted answers are very brief. Also, I did NOT like the illustrations (by Dave McKean). They’re just weird, like scribblings or sketches with no eyeballs and obscured pieces that mostly read as trippy. What am I looking at?!

I still have plans to one day read The Sandman (series), Coraline (a favorite movie), Fragile Things, Unnatural Creatures, “The Flints of Memory Lane,” Violent Cases, Neverwhere, and Stardust (all listed somewhere on my best books lists). So many people love Gaiman, and I am beginning to really respect his versatility as a writer, jumping around from one far-flung project to the next, always creepy and yet so different, following his intuition and creativity wherever it happens to take him.

QUOTES:

“If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained” (p217).

“You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it” (p278).

*There were a few more quotes, but I did not have a pen handy while I was reading most of the book, so I have lost them. My apologies.

MOVIE

The Graveyard Book movie has been in talks for more than a decade. Currently, from what I can tell, Disney+ is sitting on it and refuses to let it go or turn it into a series or even a musical or play. Gaiman just sort of sighs about it. Honestly, I think it would make a great movie, but often the gears of movie-making grind in mysterious and stupid ways.