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Jul. 28th, 2013 10:00 pmAs you may have heard, particularly if you are anywhere near Boston, Neil Gaiman has a new book out, called The Ocean at the End of the Lane. This book is kind of a big deal.
Since I am eternally behind the times, I have been reading The Graveyard Book instead. This was published five years ago. I picked up a beautiful but sadly unsigned copy at Porter Square Books, because Ihave all the willpower of a sloth wish to support independent bookstores instead of chucking the entirety of my disposable income at Amazon.
I got the one with this sexy, Gothy cover:
*pets*
Ahem. Anyway. The Graveyard Book is essentially a retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which I have not read, because I win at being an English major. (I have read Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. And “White Men’s Burden,” which, um.) Except, since it is a Neil Gaiman book, it has ghosts instead of animals.
The protagonist of our story is Nobody Owens, known as Bod, whose entire family is murdered when he is a toddler. The baby survives by wandering into the nearby graveyard, where he is adopted by some ghosts and given the Freedom of the Graveyard. In addition to ghost parents, he also gets a Guardian, a mysterious being named Silas who is neither living nor dead, and who can leave the graveyard in order to get Bod food and other stuff he needs, what with not being a ghost himself. Most of the book is pretty episodic, which makes sense since it based on a short story collection. The main plotline, however, has to do with Bod growing up, and, of course, with finding out who killed his family and why, and stopping him from finishing the job. (The man is still planning on finding the baby that got away and killing him. But he is prepared to wait.) (He is kind of a sick fuck. There are reasons for this.)
One of the main strengths in the book is the same thing that is one of the main strengths in pretty much all of Neil Gaiman’s books, namely, awesome creepy supernatural creatures. The ghouls are both scary and adorable, with hilarious names like “the Bishop of Bath and Wells” and “the 33rd President of the United States” (NOT Harry S. Truman. Just the 33rd President of the United States). There’s also a very, very, very old entity, that may be a single being or may be a group, which guards the very oldest pagan tomb under the graveyard, known as the Sleer. The Sleer is hard to describe without giving stuff away, but be assured that they are very creepy and very important to the plot, and also kind of cute and sad? Poor Sleer, stuck guarding an empty tomb for centuries. They must be so bored.
There are also illustrations, because Neil Gaiman books are fancy like that.
I highly recommend this book, not like anybody needs me to recommend it, since we all already know that Neil Gaiman books are generally pretty awesome. I laughed, I cried, I got tingly-crawly feelings on my skin, although some of those turned out to be carpenter ants actually crawling on me. (And this is after I put down two different kinds of ant bait. Le sigh.) I really should have read it five years ago.
Since I am eternally behind the times, I have been reading The Graveyard Book instead. This was published five years ago. I picked up a beautiful but sadly unsigned copy at Porter Square Books, because I
I got the one with this sexy, Gothy cover:
*pets*
Ahem. Anyway. The Graveyard Book is essentially a retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which I have not read, because I win at being an English major. (I have read Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. And “White Men’s Burden,” which, um.) Except, since it is a Neil Gaiman book, it has ghosts instead of animals.
The protagonist of our story is Nobody Owens, known as Bod, whose entire family is murdered when he is a toddler. The baby survives by wandering into the nearby graveyard, where he is adopted by some ghosts and given the Freedom of the Graveyard. In addition to ghost parents, he also gets a Guardian, a mysterious being named Silas who is neither living nor dead, and who can leave the graveyard in order to get Bod food and other stuff he needs, what with not being a ghost himself. Most of the book is pretty episodic, which makes sense since it based on a short story collection. The main plotline, however, has to do with Bod growing up, and, of course, with finding out who killed his family and why, and stopping him from finishing the job. (The man is still planning on finding the baby that got away and killing him. But he is prepared to wait.) (He is kind of a sick fuck. There are reasons for this.)
One of the main strengths in the book is the same thing that is one of the main strengths in pretty much all of Neil Gaiman’s books, namely, awesome creepy supernatural creatures. The ghouls are both scary and adorable, with hilarious names like “the Bishop of Bath and Wells” and “the 33rd President of the United States” (NOT Harry S. Truman. Just the 33rd President of the United States). There’s also a very, very, very old entity, that may be a single being or may be a group, which guards the very oldest pagan tomb under the graveyard, known as the Sleer. The Sleer is hard to describe without giving stuff away, but be assured that they are very creepy and very important to the plot, and also kind of cute and sad? Poor Sleer, stuck guarding an empty tomb for centuries. They must be so bored.
There are also illustrations, because Neil Gaiman books are fancy like that.
I highly recommend this book, not like anybody needs me to recommend it, since we all already know that Neil Gaiman books are generally pretty awesome. I laughed, I cried, I got tingly-crawly feelings on my skin, although some of those turned out to be carpenter ants actually crawling on me. (And this is after I put down two different kinds of ant bait. Le sigh.) I really should have read it five years ago.
