Neil Gaiman is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. At the moment, it looks like he’s going to take two spots in my annual favorite book top five. And it’s very likely that his latest one, The Graveyard Book, will take take the top spot. It’s just that good.
The book opens with the boy we come to know as Nobody Owens getting away before the man Jack can kill him, just as he murdered his parents and sister. He escapes to the nearby graveyard, where the ghosts take him in, raise and educate him, and keep him safe from the dangers that lurks in the land of the living.
With it’s young protagonist it may be marketed as a young adult novel, but it’s just a wonderful book. It’s funny, it doesn’t get sappy and it got quite some thrills (the man Jack may have failed at first, but he does not give up). Labeling it as ‘The Jungle Book set in a graveyard’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s a magnificent story, and I highly recommend it.
- Book read
- Neil Gaiman — The Graveyard Book
- First line
- There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.