This is the story of a little boy, his family stripped away through no fault of his own. A little boy who will, growing up, probably not remember his mother’s lullabies, or the voice she sang them in. This is the story of a boy growing up in a graveyard.

Neil Gaiman fashioned his latest novel to the model of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; both stories have boys growing up in extraordinary adoptive families and both tell the story by way of consecutive chapter histories. And my guess is that this is also where you will probably find the comparison to end.

I picked up this book for review since I know Mr. Gaiman’s work well, having every adult’s novel and some of the children’s books he’s ever written on my shelf. And much a compliment to him, I have actually read everything by him that I own. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Gaiman in Bristol at the release of Coraline, which incidentally has been released in feature film version this February, where he wrote in my copy of Good Omens to burn it.

A while ago I was pleased to hear that his newest release would be a novel suited for children as well as adults. It takes skill not to just claim that, but to actually craft that. And I am certain that when I am done reading this book, I will be happy, content and in want of nothing but to give the book its rightful place on my shelf.

If you have not already done so, watch Neil read chapter one here.

 

Chapter 1 How Nobody Came to the Graveyard

The Graveyard Book starts off with a first chapter that does everything it is supposed to, but does it with flair. Nobody, or Bod for short, Owens is the new name fashioned for a little boy who finds himself orphaned at the hand of the man Jack. This name is fashioned for him by Mrs. Owens, a long-dead woman living in the graveyard up the hill from where Bod used to live and the refuge that he finds when unwittingly wondering in need of a new home.

This first chapter is effective in the way that it manages to raise more questions than it answers. It sets the stage for the conflict, introduces us to not only the main character, but a whole array of them, and for the adults and attentive reader leaves enough to be tantalised by.

The man Jack for one is an extraordinary man, who seems to have extrahuman senses. Electric light is of no importance to him and he can extricate smells to a level unheard of;

“He could smell the child: a milky smell, like chocolate chip cookies, and the sour tang of a wet, disposable, night-time nappy. He could smell the baby shampoo in its hair, and something small and rubbery – a toy, he thought, and then, no, something to suck – that the child had been carrying.”

The man Jack also turns out to have planned his ploy for months, even years and decides for the time being to not inform the ‘convocation’, whomever they might be, of his failure to complete the task set for him.

One thing that strikes me as odd. Before the man Jack could tend to his task, the baby is said to have ‘…been woken by the sound of something on the floor beneath him falling with a crash.’ Certainly that was not Jack’s doing ? That would seem out of character.

And then there are the inhabitants of the graveyard. We meet Caius Pompeius, who is described as one of the most senior citizens of the graveyard and had asked to be laid to rest in this graveyard rather than to have his body sent back to Rome. Also in the mix is the last character I would like to pay some attention to; Silas.

Silas is an impressive man, with the ability to influence others, either by mind alteration or flattery. He describes himself as a caretaker ’in a manner of speaking’ and is described as ‘the stranger that Jack had taken for a caretaker’. Silas has been given the freedom of the graveyard when he was not alive, but, unlike the other inhabitants, he can leave by choice and does so to obtain food for Bod and to go see Bod’s family’s bodies.

Another hint as to what type of man Silas is; when Silas feeds Bod a banana and is asked what it tastes like, he says; ’I’ve absolutely no idea’, because Silas consumes only one food and it is not bananas. Also, Silas dryly without sentiment says that ‘[i]t must be good to have somewhere that you belong. Somewhere that’s home’ and is said to exist ‘…on the borderland between their world [of the dead] and the world they had left.’

 

My guess… Silas is a vampire.