The story kicks off as a one-year-old kid escapes a murder. While his whole family gets killed, he gets out of the house, up the hill and into the Graveyard. There, (to make a long story short,) the ghosts hold a conference of sorts by which the boy is granted Freedom of the Graveyard - meaning he can walk in and out of tombs and see in the dark. He is also named Nobody Owens. Nobody, because he is like nobody and is entirely unique; Owens, because that is the last name of the ghost couple who adopted him. The pun, I'm sure, is perfectly intentional.
Seeing that I'm still navigating my way through organizing this blog, I'm not entirely sure how the posts will be laid out yet. However, for now they will run something like this:
Overview-- One of the best things about this book, is that growing in a graveyard, Nobody (Bod, for short) is offered a bear minimum of the material comforts that other people seem to take for granted. This illustrates how one needs very little to (happily) survive. Interestingly enough, of the very few things Bod was offered were books. It ranked among things like food and drinks - he did not bother with clothing until much later in the plot and even then he kept them to a minimum.
On a slightly different note, the Graveyard's an ancient thing. There are graves that date far back to pre-history. The most recent grave was dug 30 years before the events of the book took place, after which the Graveyard became a natural resort. This allowed for a diversity among the ghosts so interesting, giving each ghost his/her own personality and back-story.
Characters-- Gaiman recognized the potential that an ancient graveyard offers and made use of it. For instance, one could find anything from a witch (victim of the medieval witch-craze) to an ancient Roman soldier. Each of these characters reflected his/her era and social rank.
For example, there was a Romantic poet (yes, capital R-- Look the difference up) that encouraged Bod to do something reckless filling Bod's head with Romantic ideals. On the other hand, Mr. Owen would beat Bod up if he did something wrong, seeing corporal punishment was fine back in his days.
So did Bod discover the world and learn about it. Despite his virtually non-existent interaction with all things non-Graveyard, Bod was relatively ready to face it when he got older. There is, it seems, some constancy to the human race that allows the upbringing of different cultures and times past to prepare one for the contemporary world. Maybe (just maybe) we did not change/"progress" as much as we seem to think. And, maybe (just maybe) that's not too bad.
Other stuff-- Aside from ghosts, the Graveyard is full of other creatures who are also interesting and quite a bit mysterious. It would have been nice to know more about them -- what they are, what they do, and so on (especially since one of the main characters belongs to this group). As it is, they feel a little out of nowhere - there is but little depth to them, despite having a lot of potential.
Overall, I gave The Graveyard Book 4 out of 5 stars. Check it out!
