Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book”

The book was purchased from BORDERS on 8 April this year (2009).

It sat forlornly on my shelf next to “Good Omens”, book jointly written by Teri Pretchett and Mr Gaiman himself. But it was only last week that I picked it up and started to read it.

In my opinion, it was a delightful read for adults and an exceptionally wondrous adventure for children to partake in.

The best way to describe this was put forth by Garth Nix, Australian author of young fantasy novels: “I wish my younger self could have had the opportunity to read and reread this wonderful book, and my older self wishes that I had written it.”

Honestly, I don’t think this is the best book Neil has written. Not that I have read a lot of his books, besides his Sandman (graphic novel) collection.

But the other one that I had read, “Neverwhere”, blew me away. That story is about an entire underground world that exists in London, where good and evil reign and their age-old battle continues. That one brought me to a different realm altogether and I highly recommend that to anyone who enjoys a good parody, allegory, and concrete reality being mapped onto ever-mystical fantasy.

This one, “The Graveyard Book”, is about a young boy who was taken under protection by an old graveyard and its inhabitants – ghosts of hundreds to thousands to time infinite, years ago – when he was being pursued by the killer who murdered his family when he was a mere babe. The story continues with his adventures in the graveyard and how he unravelled the mystery of his killer…

And of course, with Neil Gaiman, he introduces whole new worlds together with that.

It is a delicious book to read. Some chapters a lot more than others. He is the master of creating tales of fantasy – all kinds. When you read his book, you don’t read words. You travel. Not just to faraway lands but to lands that exist only in a distant memories that you absolutely have no recollection of ever experiencing, in dreams that are ever familiar but you don’t remember ever having, in the boundaries of your Imagination you never knew you were capable of reaching.

Highly recommended for those who need to unwind with a good read, but without wishing to be too emotionally drawn into the tale.

And at the end, when I read his acknowledgements, I was thrilled to stumble upon his thanks to Audrey Niffeneggar (author of “The Time Traveller’s Wife”), the one whose book I had laughed, cried and spent huge amounts of emotions on! She is an amazing author and it was after her this first novel that I started to look out for first-time novelists.

(I should probably write to her to get some form of commission cos to date, I have physically bought four to five copies of her book as gifts to my friends and pushed a lot more others to get it! It was named “Tomorrow’s Classics” by BORDERS. I think that speaks for itself.)

Two of my favourite contemporary authors.

Tantalising, captivating, enchanting and wondrous.

Filed under: Books