Book Review: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery

Publication: October 2008

Format: Paperback, 289 pages

Buy: Amazon

I don’t know what it is with me and Gaiman. I found myself wanting to read more from him when I found his book on the bookshelf.

It started with a murder. Nobody Owens or Bod’s family was murdered by the man Jack. When the Owenses (the ghost couple) found him in the graveyard, they decided to raise him along with Silas, his guardian (who provided him with food etc). He was given a freedom of the graveyard so that he may have access to everywhere in the graveyard. 

The story then followed Bod and his adventure in and outside the graveyard as he grew up. When he was five, he met his human friend, Scarlett, who thought that Bod was her imaginary friend. Later Bod and Scarlett were separated when she moved away to Scotland with her parents. As he grew up, Bod was captured by the ghouls and later saved by his tutor, Miss Lupescu, and he befriend with a witch ghost called Liza. He went to school which end up in disaster when he failed to keep a low profile.

As years past, Bod learned about where he came from and began to do a bit of research in what happened to his actual family while trying to keep safe from the man Jack, who was still looking for him.

Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book was inspired by The Jungle Book where the baby was raised by ghosts instead of animals. It was a fun, short read. I really enjoyed Gaiman’s writing in this one. I might have finished the book in one sitting if I wasn’t so busy with these days. This book is definitely my favorite from Gaiman up to date.

Book Cover's Description:

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . .