The Graveyard Book

Upon finishing The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle when I was just a llad (sic), I decided I was going to read every book that ever won the Newberry Medal. I don’t exactly remember why I decided this. Maybe it was because I was so impressed with Voyages that I thought it represented the quality of those awards—if Voyages of Doctor Doolittle won it, the award had to mean something. The Newberry Award seems to be the only major literary award (or artistic award) that I still trust: Johnny Tremain, The Westing Game, The View from Saturday, Lincoln: A Photobiography, The Giver, Julie of the Wolves—the list really is pretty amazing. My goal to read all of them was never completed, but I did read a lot of them, and I only stopped after the “donkey” (a secret book-giver on Christmas Eve) gave me Maniac Magee, and my brother made such relentless fun of the book’s title and cover that I decided to give up my quest and not read for a while. This is why Mark, as a brother, has always been overrated: for each special hiking trip he took Paul on, he destroyed at least one artistic and intellectual dream of mine. I should at least give him credit, though, for abusing me away from Broadway shows and teddy bears. So maybe he is not overrated.

Earlier this year, when I heard about the newest Newberry Award winner The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, my childhood interest in the Newberry inexplicably returned. When a fantasy/scifi book wins the Newberry, it usually means that there is going to be a lot of thoughtful prose to accompany the mythologies and narrative intrigue that usually characterize the genre. The Newberry people, like most award givers, like to have their literary pretensions satisfied, and if a fantasy novel can do that, all the better. At any rate, I decided to read The Graveyard Book as soon as I had the chance.

If my regular readers have not noticed already, I refuse summary as resolutely as I refuse raisins, so I will not summarize the book’s plot other than to say it is about a kid who is raised by ghosts that inhabit a local graveyard. As narratively magical as they come, the novel begins with a deep menace that quickly dissolves to wonder, and then to delight. Gaiman, whose imagination seems to be inherited from Roald Dahl, has the gift of enchantment, which is no small feat: rare are the books that can whip up a world that seems to be familiar in terms of its affective possibilities, observations, and emotions but foreign in its history, geography, mythology.

I suspect the Harry Potter series achieves something similar, although I have not read the series other than the first book (I am waiting for Maria to be about the right age for us to read them together). I am told that the Twilight series also does this, but those who have told me that are wrong because I read the first 30 pages of the first book and it was utterly foreign in all the things that should be familiar, like emotions, observations, relationships, compassion, and quality. The reason, though, that I bring up these two series is because they popped in my mind while I was reading The Graveyard Book as comparisons. Thinking about them, and their popularity, brought into relief the excellence of Gaiman’s story in a genre that is already oversaturated by vampires, ghosts, and schoolyard legends. But what is really great is Gaiman’s prose—precise, fun, and light.

For example, in a fantastic chapter called “Danse Macabre,” Bod, the protagonist, stumbles upon an ancient tradition in which the dead dance with the living in a public square during a late autumn blossoming. As he approaches the scene, he sees a young mother holding a baby “swaying her head to the music”:

“How long does the music go on for?” Bod asked her, but she said nothing, just swayed and smiled. Bod did not think she smiled much normally. And only when he was certain that she had not heard him, that he had Faded, or was simply not someone she cared enough about to listen to she said, “Blimmin ‘eck. It’s like Christmases.” She said it like a woman in a dream, as if she was seeing herself from the outside. In the same not-really-there tone of voice, she said, “Puts me in mind of me Gran’s sister, Aunt Clara. The night before Christmas we’d go to her, after me Gran passed away, and she’d play music on her old piano, and she’d sing, sometimes, and we’d eat chocolates and nuts and I can’t remember any of the songs she sung. But that music, it’s like all of them songs playing at once.”

The passage is emblematic for some of the larger effects that the book has on the reader. The woman with the baby is clearly in a dreamwalk of some sort, where things utterly strange take on a familiarity in which past experiences and emotions are remembered, only as if they have been amplified (“like all of them songs playing at once”). Freud would probably call this the uncanny, but the response isn’t abject fear but rather a dreamy nostalgia. The book has the same effect: The reader knows as little as Bod does about every given situation, and as layers are uncovered, there is still a sheen of mystery that is never quite stripped away. The enchanting nature of prose narrative comes from the sense of not-really-knowing, where one almost has the answer but cannot quite connect everything. This is why the big reveal at the end of some narratives is never quite as satisfying as its anticipation: the slightly unknown is much more a part of our lived existence (especially in childhood) and hence has a more powerful effect on us. As readers, we “sway” to the music of Gaiman’s prose, wondering what to make of the things we are witnessing, only to remind ourselves of the things that great art can conjure, whether it is singing Christmas songs at Aunt Clara’s in memory or a wholly new experience tweaked with familiarity: “like all of them songs playing at once.”

The greatest of children’s books can create this sense, and I wouldn’t hesitate to put The Graveyard Book in that category. I advise all those within hearing distance to read it with their eight-year-old (or above) as soon as possible.

P.S. Don’t think the book is not scary—it is. But it is scary in the way things should be scary, to heighten the senses instead of to dull them. Let it scare you—you will be better for it. I condone a good scare, especially for children.

I should add that you know a story is subpar when it all hinges on whether every moment is “connected” at the end: the movies often make use of this cheap device, and the result is a forgettable movie. The Graveyard Book leaves much of its mystery intact, which is the way I prefer things.