Have you ever thought about your place in the universe? Sometimes a monster feels as if there is a greater plan at work and that something that makes no sense today might show a pattern at some time in the future. You might end up feeling like a cog in the giant machine that is the universe. It’s like that time my entire flying monkey army got horrible food poisoning and were grounded for a week. There were sick monkeys everywhere, and there was monkey vomit everywhere. Those were some of the darkest minutes of my life. But then a day into it, a horrible witch showed up at my door. It turned out that she needed monkey vomit for a project she was working on. Lots and lots of monkey vomit. And here I was throwing it out. It’s just things like this that make you wonder about the universe.
What does monkey vomit have to do with The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman? It seems like one of the main themes of the book is destiny. Here’s the basic set-up of the book: An entire family is killed by a mysterious murderer and the only person who escapes is a toddler. The toddler happens to wander into a graveyard, and the ghosts and creatures of the graveyard decide to raise, hide, and protect the toddler. So he grows up in a graveyard. In the graveyard the child has ghost parents and a guardian who is maybe a vampire, although it’s never really said what he is.
The book is made up of several stories that take place while the boy grows up. I have two beefs with this book. Beef number one is the name of the protagonist. His name is “Bod” short for “Nobody.” So it’s Bod like Rod “the Bod” Bodinsky. ‘Nuff said. Beef number two is that half of the stories are the sort of cautionary tales that belong in an Highlights Magazine. Reading a story where the protagonist ignores the advice of his parents, goes somewhere he’s not supposed to be, steals something, ignores the advice of a friend, and is then dishonest with the people he’s dealing with, you know you know you know that there is going to be a disappointed but caring adult delivering a lecture at the end of the story and maybe administering some tough love. *shudder*
Of course, this book IS aimed at adolescents, so maybe they get off on that kind of thing.
I feel like I’m in danger of talking too much about the bad things. The good news is that the writing is awesome. I think this may be my favorite book by Gaiman so far. The thing about Neil Gaiman is that he’s a really excellent writer AND he’s amazingly creative AND he can write creepy AND he likes to play with the narrative form. His writing works on many levels and I really enjoy it. There are a few things that really stand out about this book.
One, Gaiman adds very interesting angles to some tired conventions. The book has werewolves, ghouls, vampires, long lost treasure in buried tombs, and even a secret society. However, Gaiman gives them all a new shine, great deal of depth, and a mythological air. A lot of reviewers have compared this book to the “Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling, which Gaiman himself says inspired it, but I think another good comparison would be the original Voyages of Sinbad from the Thousand and one Arabian Nights, but of course written for young adults. These stories have a lot of adventure.
Another great thing is that some really genuinely sad things happen to our protagonist. This adds emotional depth and reality to the book. I think that this might be one of the things I missed in Coraline (see my review of the movie Coraline.) The end of the Graveyard Book isn’t exactly sewn up. It’s actually the beginning of a new adventure, and it left me wishing for more.
Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Final result: Neil Gaiman keeps getting better and better. I really liked this book. It’s clear why it won the Newberry Award, and I have to say that if Gaiman sees fit to write a sequel, I’ll be among those eager to read it.
Have you read this book? How did you feel about its use of destiny? Do you think there should be a sequel? Let us know in the comments!
The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman – Illustrations by Dave McKean – Harper Collins – 2008
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Sometimes I almost forget that I do book reviews at this site, what with the Pyramid Head papercrafts, a Cthulhu interview, and a week full of monster quotes. But I did originally set this site up to do horror novel reviews. Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!
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