Book Review :: The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman…

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean
Published by HarperCollins
on September 30th 2008
Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Young Adult
Pages: 312
Format: Audio
Goodreads

After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family...

Last updated on 16 January 2025

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What is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman about?

The Graveyard Book is about Nobody ‘Bod’ Owens, and his adventures living with the dead in the graveyard. The story begins with Bod, a nameless toddler who wanders into the cemetery after leaving his home in the middle of the night, where his family is currently being murdered.

In the graveyard, he is immediately surrounded by the ghosts of the people buried there, and they protect him from the murderer, vowing to do so for as long as need be. They give him the name Nobody (because ‘he aint nobody but himself’), and Mr. and Mrs. Owens adopt him into their family, while Silas, one of the eldest members of the graveyard, and who is neither living nor dead, becomes his guardian.

While he is a normal boy, Bod is given the freedom of the graveyard and can see in the dark, fade away in plain sight, and is being taught by the graveyard community to do things like haunt, and dream walk. If Bod leaves the graveyard, he leaves the protection that it and it’s members give him, and could be hunted down and killed by the man, Jack, who killed his family.

My Thoughts on The Graveyard Book

At first, I was a little confused, as the climax of the story seemed to be happening in chapter two, but it was only after that I realised it was more a collection of stories and adventures that Bod gets up to over course of 15 years, loosely woven together.

I really liked Bod’s character. He was just a young boy, innocent and naive to the ways of the living world, but seeped in history and culture from the lessons and stories he received from the vast array of people buried in the graveyard. He was a little adventurous, but at the same time eventually knew about the man called Jack trying to find and kill him. At the beginning of the book, he meets a girl called Scarlet, and she eventually leaves for Scotland and leaves him behind, but, of course, she returns at the end of the book.

It was a fun book, and I suspect it would have taken me a lot less time to actually read than it did to listen to the audio version, but I listened at work while I did mundane tasks, so it was perfect, really. The audiobook, for anyone interested, is available on Audible and is 7 hours and 47 minutes long. There’s also an unabridged, but full cast production, version of it.

Some of my favourite quotes:

“You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”

“Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”

Have you read The Graveyard Book? What did you think?