"This stone was raised to Sarah Ford,not Sarah's virtues to record-
For they're well known to all the town-
No Lord; it was raised to keep her down."
"Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake,
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake."
"Here lies Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw."
that was a selection of epigrams from real tombstones around the world and which i found on the website dedicated to Neil Gaiman's coolest book yet, The Graveyard Book. Thanks to Huixun and my old Neil Gaiman Book Club i was alerted to this cool illustrated book.
written in the great tradition of Rudyard Kipling which Mr Gaiman himself claims was his literary inspiration, its a complex allegory about life, death, growing up, loss and change. Of course, its setting is an English graveyard which is pretty different from the kind one finds in Southeast Asia or the East, which are not seen as places of rest but places of death, rot and evil..even though Asians would not call it evil but the world of yin..but a rose by any other name..
an English graveyard with its overhanging tress and overgrowing grass and plants with wild foxes and cats thrown in for good measure becomes the home of a baby who has a rather tragic background..taken in by Mr and Mrs Owens, a childless ghost couple, he becomes Nobody Owens, or Bod, for short..along the way we meet interesting inhabitants of the graveyard such as Caius Pompeius, the oldest resident, a remnant from Roman times and the city of Camulodunum..we meet Josiah Worthington, Bart, local politician and aristocrat who purchased the graveyard and dedicated it to posterity as a government reserve..we meet Silas, the dark resident who might just have been a reformed Jack the Ripper or a vampire turned death highway patrolman..Miss Lupescu, a Hound of God as she calls herself, but known to us as a werewolf, and Elizabeth Hempstroke, a witch drowned in Elizabethan times and buried in the unconsecrated ground of the graveyard, reserved for the criminals, suicides and witches..and of course, Jack, the cause of all of our unlikely protagonist's troubles..
my favourite chapter in the book has to be Chapter 5, The Danse Macabre..when white flowers bloom in the height of winter (they shouldn't) this signals the start of the festival of Macabray, when the dead, in stately fashion, leave the graveyard and meeting the living in the town square, where there is a great dance, until finally, even the Lady of the Grey herself, a figure representing a genial death, appears to dance with them, until mid-night when the dead and living return to their own homes, once more having nothing to do with each other..a macabre version of Cinderella indeed..i especially love the lyrics of the song, "one to leave and one to stay, and all to dance the Macabray" of course, for all my literature inclined friends out there, this is once again, a metaphor for the dance of death all human beings go through all their lives, until death finally claims us..
my second favourite chapter is the story of Bod meeting the witch, Liza (which is such a post-modern version of Elizabeth and appropriate for the story) and learing about the Biblical-English tradition of the Potter's Field where the outcasts of society are buried..this is a veiled attack on the supposedly uncharitable Christian Church of course, for those who have eyes to see it as it is, but totally fun as it were..it ends with Bod fashioning a headstone for the unmarked grave of Liza with a glass paper weight and some paint..appropriate and quirky, but i think some fruitcake and a cricket bat would do better..there are other chapters which are interesting..but i feel that the chapter on the ghoul-gate didnt really fit in with the story..even though the names of the ghouls, such as the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Duke of Westminster, the Honourable Archibald Fitzburgh, the Thirty-Third President of The United States of America, The Emperor of China and The Famous Writer Victor Hugo was so totally, morbidly cool..until we got to the bit where one finds out the ghouls get their names from the first victim they eat..which even i found a bit much for a children's book..
and in case you thought otherwise, The Graveyard Book won the 2008 John Newbury Award for Childrens' Literature..i dun noe if i'll ever read this to my kids as a bedtime story, but i sure do enjoy the book miself..all in all i'd rate this book 4.5 stars out of 5 for a Neil Gaiman book..well done Mr Gaiman..you've blown us all away again with that trademark quirkiness and "Wodehousian generosity of spirit" as one critic commented on ya Anansi Boys..i seriously recommend this book..
