Book review: The Graveyard Book

Published on Friday 17 October 2008 16:25

Neil Gaiman Bloomsbury, £12.99

THE orphan is a staple character of a great deal of fiction for younger readers. There are very few books that I can think of, however, that open with the orphaning described in such unsparing detail.

A sinister presence, "the man Jack", has seeped into a suburban house like mist, knife in hand, and "left the woman in her bed, the man on the bedroom floor, the older child in her brightly coloured bedroom, surrounded by toys and half-finished models". As he raises his blade above the little shape in the cot, he discovers, to his horror, that it is only a teddy bear: the toddler has escaped.

The intrepid child makes his way by chance to a graveyard, with the man Jack using his exceptional sense of smell to track his errant quarry. Luckily for the child, some beneficial ghosts have stumbled on him first, and at the behest of his newly undead mother, decide to protect him. Mrs Owens, who died in the mid-18th century, insists on keeping him, with various other ghosts (the Roman Caius Pompeius, reputedly the oldest resident; Mother Slaughter; the Hon Josiah Worthington, who lives in the big mausoleum) chipping in their tuppence worth. The mysterious Silas – neither properly dead nor alive – by insinuations, sleight of mind and forced suggestions, convinces the man Jack to search elsewhere. Silas becomes the boy's guardian; he is adopted by the Owens and given the "Freedom of the Graveyard". He also is given a name: Nobody Owens.

So opens Neil Gaiman's delightfully creepy little fable, a work of dizzying imagination, suffused with a rich gothic sensibility. I'm always vaguely suspicious of books emblazoned with the puff "set to become a classic", but in the case of The Graveyard Book it might well be the case. Yes, it is fantastical, eerie, exciting and imaginative: but it is also emotionally affecting. Best of all, unlike so many contemporary teenage books in this genre, it actually ends, rather than leaving the reader with a marketing-trick cliff-hanger. If Gaiman wishes to, the characters could no doubt return, but the satisfying closure means it works well as a standalone novel.

Nobody, or Bod as he comes to be called, grows up in the graveyard. There are plenty of hazards and antics within its boundaries, but he is made acutely aware that the real danger lurks in the land of the living. In the acknowledgements, Gaiman cites Kipling's The Jungle Book, and the influence is clear. Instead of animals, we have Miss Lupescu the werewolf; a witch named Liza Hempstock in the unsanctified ground; mischievous ghouls that call themselves things like the Duke of Westminster and the Thirty-Third President of the United States; and a slithery, hissing, never quite completely described thing known as the Sleer that lives in the old barrow and could give Kaa and Nag a run for their money, fright-wise.

Gaiman fully explores the conceit of the novel. Bod's education comprises both what the dead remember – he's taught about Renaissance humours and Victorian manners – and what the dead can do: skills such as fading, sliding, dreamwalking. It is genuinely moving that he is the only one who ages in the graveyard: the five-year-olds he plays with when he's five are still five when he's 15. Gaiman introduces the various ghosts with wry epitaphs (Nehemiah Trot, Poet, 1741-1774, "Swans Sing Before They Die"; Miss Euphemia, 1861-1883, "She Sleeps, Aye, Yet She Sleeps With Angels").

Bod slowly has to deal with the living, and the real threat in the book is not from the mostly beneficent ghosts but the malevolent humans – bullying schoolchildren, devious adults, and the man Jack and his acquaintances above all. Although there's a rip-roaring climax and a battle that will look great with CGI, it's the sweetly melancholy descriptions of leaving childhood and dealing with death that make The Graveyard Book exceptional.

Gaiman makes childhood the epitome of freedom, even if it's the freedom to shimmer out of sight or slip between gravestones, and the adult Nobody has to learn about the lack of freedom, and death as the absolute lack of freedom. Perhaps the most heartwarming aspect of this chilly and challenging yarn is that it makes desolate city graveyards appear almost – almost – homely.