Gaiman, Neil: The Graveyard Book
The Graveyard Book (2008)
Written by: Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by: Dave McKean
Genre: Children's/Fantasy
Pages: 307 (Hardcover)
Let me see if I can track my Neil Gaiman experience: first, it was American Gods in 2003, followed shortly by Coraline. Then Good Omens and Smoke and Mirrors (or maybe that order is flipped), and from there, miscellaneous stories. Truth me told, the more of Gaiman I read, the less impressed I was (except for the movie Mirrormask, which was extraordinarily lovely, and I prefer the story to Coraline). I still stand by my experience that novel-wise, he's hard to beat (but I've only read one novel), but his short stories, while having fantastic ideas, don't always come together properly.
And that's not meant to be an insult to those who love everything Gaiman writes. Rather, every writer has a scale of great, good, average, bad, and even Gaiman's average is better than other authors' good simply because technically speaking, he's got a fantastic skill with language. But I'd gotten tired of him, as well as all the praise, and it was only reading The Sandman (and watching the film adaptation of Stardust, which was awesome), that made me decide to give Gaiman another shot. It didn't hurt that The Graveyard Book won the 2009 Hugo, to say nothing of the 2009 Newbery Medal. It also helped that I found a first edition hardcover in the used book section at Hastings, so I decided to go ahead and give this a go while I still had warm fuzzies for Gaiman's work. :)
The premise: ganked from BN.com: 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. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack--who has already killed Bod's family . . .
Review style: I'm going to verge into spoiler territory this time, because part of what I want to talk about are the bigger questions the plot raises but doesn't resolve. Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil the ending directly, but there's some logic questions I want to bring up that I hope closer readers of this book can answer. Also, I'll talk about the comparison to Kipling's The Jungle Book (which I've never read), and discuss the book's target audience (here's a hint, it's not YA!). If you're worried about the plot questions/spoilers I raise, skip to "My Rating" at the end of the review, where I talk about whether or not this is a good title for Gaiman newbies to start with.
Here's my problem with Gaiman short stories (yes, I know this isn't a short story): he has really cool ideas, but they don't always seem fully fleshed out. And when I say that, I don't mean he doesn't consider all the angles one could take with an idea: I'm not asking Gaiman to go down a road I'd prefer rather than the one he wants to follow. Rather, the road he wants to follow doesn't always arrive at a destination. I think that with Gaiman's work, you're often meant to read between the lines and infer what's happening or what will happen. There's a certain amount of intellectual food for thought left over, and sometimes that works in his short stories, and other times, it just feels like an incomplete story.
In this case, I feel incomplete. Cool idea, no doubt: a young boy raised by the denizens of a graveyard, a boy who has the power to live in both worlds. Wicked awesome. But where my disbelief started getting poked at was after the story was over and I started asking questions.
For example: I loved the whole legion of Jacks of all Trades. HOWEVER: if they killed these families because of what amounted to a prophecy of a boy (or child?) that could live in both worlds, how did they target families? And did they know it was a BOY or did they just know it was a child. I think this is actually explained, but I'm forgetting. If it's the former, why kill the WHOLE family instead of just the boy? If it's the latter, that leads into my next question: how did they target families? Because it's not like they wiped out an entire generation of kids. Bod met others his age, you know? So what made certain families a target, and ironically, it was the Jacks' actions that led to the prophecy fulfillment, you know? Sure, they didn't know that, and I can appreciate that irony, but…
It makes me think about the Jacks' actions on the whole: they kept talking about killing the missing boy before it was too late, but it seems to me that "too late" meant Bod becoming an adult and therefore losing his ability to live in both worlds. Maybe the Jacks didn't realize that would happen, but if they DID, why in the hell did they have to finish the job?
And what WAS their purpose anyway? I could get a solid sense even with the snippets of their world that we were given. It was interesting, and I love that they were the Jacks of all Trades, but something very tangible was missing from this storyline. Maybe if I'd known how they targeted the families, I'd be okay with it, but there's too many questions regarding this plot that it's hard to sit back and enjoy this story for what it is: a delightful tale inspired by The Jungle Book.
Now, Gaiman says in an afterword that it's not necessary to have read it in order to enjoy this, and that's certainly true. He also says the source material is nothing like the Disney cartoon, and if the mere comparison between the cartoon and the Disney live-action film (which I kind of love) is any indication, I believe that too. What little I know of The Jungle Book, I could see comparisons in the stories presented here. Enjoyable, and I bet I'd get more out of the book if I were more familiar with Kipling's work, or maybe I wouldn't. I've heard some grumblings that Gaiman's tales are too similarly aligned with Kipling's, so maybe it's a good thing I'm in the dark in this regard.
As far as target audience goes, it's funny: Gaiman readers will read EVERYTHING Gaiman writes, no matter who it's targeted to, and that's quite fine. In fact, I think readers lose nothing by investigating the children's and YA sections of the stores once in a while, you know? But in stores, this book was often put on display without any markers to indicate the target audience, and I'm still amused that a children's book (I consider it middle-grade, but I could be wrong. I won't call it YA, because I can't find it in the YA section in my bookstores, but rather the middle-grade section) actually won the Hugo, because I think if anyone else wrote this book, nobody (ha!) would've given it the time of day.
Does it deserve the accolades? It's a good book. I enjoyed the language and the art (by the ever-awesome Dave McKean), and at times I was quite charmed. But in the end, I found the book pretty predictable, and not because of its parallel to The Jungle Book. I'm not saying that Hugo award winners can't be predictable, but it makes me wonder about the rest of the nominees, and better still, all the books eligible that year that didn't make the cut.
But it's good. It's Gaiman, right? Like I said earlier, every author has a scale, and Gaiman's average is oftentimes better than another author's good. Still, I never felt any threat to the characters, and I knew that in the end, all would be set aright. Of course, that's the fact it's a children's book talking, and part of me hoped that Bod would end up dying in an uplifting way that wouldn't scare the snot out of kids. He didn't, and for the record, maybe I was just having a carry-over issue. If you don't know what I mean by that, don't ask, and if you do, SHUSH!
My Rating
Buy the Paperback: but it's close to "Give It Away." Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this well enough: it's a fast read with some delightful moments and lovely language, but a closer inspection of the plot made me batty. I'm glad I found it on the used bookshelf for only $8.99. :) The art's nice too (but then again, I do love Dave McKean), but I wish there'd been more of it. A predictable story in its own way, so if you're a Gaiman newbie, I don't suggest starting here. Go for his other Hugo winner: American Gods. Now that is a book to sink your teeth into, and to be honest, I'm kind of wanting to read it again. The Graveyard Book is fun enough, but I don't see myself coming back to it, unless I have a kid one day and we read it together. Which, for the record, would be lots of fun, even though the beginning is quite dark. :)
Also, if you want to "read" the whole thing, minus illustrations but with added voices, check out Gaiman's Graveyard Book Tour, where he reads the entire thing aloud, for free!
Cover Commentary: Simple and elegant, but to be honest, I think I like "other" cover better. I'm not sure if this was for an adult edition I can't find, or a UK cover, or the Subterannean cover, or all of the above, but I wish I had it (it's the cover behind the cut, but click here for the other cover, which is much bigger than that of the entry). It just encapsulates the story so much better: it's creepier and simply PERFECT, you know? I mean, how can it not capture your attention, with a baby walking on the edge of a bloody knife? With ghosts! And the graveyard in the blade? Now I'm sad I don't have this other cover… :(
Next up: The Comet's Curse by Dom Testa