The Graveyard Book (2008)
Written by Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by Dave McKean

 

The Graveyard Book won the prestigious Newberry Award for Young Fiction in 2009. It is by Neil Gaiman, a man known for his quirky and often fantastical screen plays, Stardust and Coraline. What it has most of all is a clever, inventive and heartfelt story that brings a introspective and sardonic humor to horror fiction.

Neil Gaiman writes for children but there is nothing condescending about it. The verbage, while pared down from overly sentimental meanderings about life and death, is clever and appealing despite their macabre subject matter. Bod, the young protagonist, learns his letters from the names on tombstones. The story begins with commonplace horror story keynotes, a knife, a dark hearted murderer and a family's massacre. The only one who survives this slaughter, miraculously, is a toddler barely able to walk or talk. Still he makes his way from his crib unaware that his parents and only sister lay dead and manages to make it up the hill, through the gates and into the slumbering grounds of a graveyard. The killer pursues, committed to a secret mission, but he is foiled by ghosts, specifically the childless-in-life couple, Mr. and Mrs. Owens. Mrs. Owens clasps the baby to her and vows to keep him safe despite the protestations of some of the other ghosts who have no wish to interact with the living world. But how to keep the babe fed and clothed? Silas, a creature who is not yet dead, nor alive, steps in to help, offering to become the baby's guardian till he is of age.

Nobody Owens, or Bod as he comes to be called, is thus ushered into his life in the Graveyard where he will learn the skills of Fading, Haunting and Dream-Walking, but, the greatest lesson he has to learn is the art of living. Swirling in and through the fantastical and often dark story is the dilemma of human longing, for love, for family, for our place in the world. To find a path that takes us from our beginning to our end with an appreciation for the gifts we find and those that come to us. While it is Bod's personal journey, it is as well, humanity's universal one. Among his discovers is that there is more to fear from the living than from the dead, that there are darker places in this world than graveyards. Battles are fought against ghouls and won by wit and courage, friendships are gained, and then lost, and a murderer is finally brought his due justice.

I am sure that many parents will question whether or not to let their children read this book, just as many parents struggle with what to tell their children about death. Should they fear it? Live their lives in mortal dread that one day they shall become nothing more than dust and bones swallowed by earth and time? Or should we instead take from the dead what we can and go forth to live our lives as monuments to their lost chances or all too brief existence?

Recently a friend told me they would not discuss or even let their child know about death because they didn't want him to lie awake at night fearing it. I contemplated telling him that children are far more resilient and pragmatic about the subject than we are. I think he spoke more of his own fears than his child's. Bod never questions his life among the dead, until the girl Scarlett leads him out of the graveyard and into the lights of the living world that he begins to long for the world outside.

In the end Bod faces a choice of creating a life from death or to entomb himself in a suspended state where no choices are made, no risks taken. The characters that have shaped his world, wise enigmatic Silas, a man who lives between the worlds of living and dead, the ghosts, warm compassionate Mrs. and Mr. Owens, the smart tongued and shrewd witch girl Liza, and the living girl Scarlett Amber Perkins.

The world Gaiman has created is truly a joy to explore and enjoy. I missed Bod when the last page was done and wondered about him as if he were my own child. Cheering his courage, and fearing for his safety, in the end, I found myself wondering where his life would take him and just what adventures he might find. After all, when your life has been among the dead, what could hold any terror for you other than the sheer unexpected twists and turns that the world can throw at you.

Though I'm not a huge Tom Sawyer fan, it's easy to compare Bod setting off into the world of the living much as Tom and Huck lit out for the territories with only their wits, their audacity and their unrepentant strong wills to guide them. Bod has been given a skill beyond Fading or Haunting or any other supernatural ability; he has been given the gift of knowing that each precious second of life is worth more than a lifetime of power.

The word is that a film is currently in the making and while that doesn't always bode well for a really well written horror novel, just ask Stephen King, I have high hopes. Considering Gaiman's already established film history, he is perhaps uniquely suited to adapting such a inventive junior horror story for the screen.