The Graveyard Book

When I studied abroad in London last semester, I lived in an area just North of central London called Highgate. Highgate Village is at the top of Highgate Hill, and it is a lovely area with many green places and a mixture of quaint and grand old architecture. It has become home to several British celebrities, which makes it a spot of interest to tourists. But more than anything else, Highgate is famous for its cemetery. As I was reading The Graveyard Book, I could not help but associate my memories of Highgate Cemetery with Bod's graveyard. The similarities are all too striking. I wonder if Neil Gaiman, as a British man, ever visited Highgate Cemetery. He must have. I have posted some pictures of Highgate Cemetery so that you can compare it with the graveyard in your mind's eye.
I was excited about the setting and context of this book because it made me nostalgic for London and Highgate, but as the story progressed and subsequently ended, I found myself wanting something more from it. Through Bod's misadventures, the reader gets to explore more of the graveyard and meet more of its inhabitants, which is stimulating and fun to read. However, I was hoping that the setting of a graveyard would be providing something cathartic for Bod. His family's murder begins the story, and though he has Mr. and Mrs. Owens for parents and Silas for a guardian, he spends a good deal of time roaming around alone.

I was hoping to find Bod an increasingly contemplative character or that circumstances in the graveyard would force him to return to thoughts of the nature of death, but I never got that feeling. Though Bod grows up surrounded by death, and with a sort of shroud for swaddling clothes, I did not get the impression that he ever fully engaged with the idea of death. Perhaps I was expecting too much from Bod, but I think I am justified in expecting more from Gaiman.

The book does not have pleasant symmetry because Bod's character does not show depth or development (apart from an improvement in speech) nor does Gaiman reconnect Bod's growing up in the graveyard to his views on death. In fact, I would argue that Gaiman sets up a cognitive disconnect regarding how Bod views death: though Bod has been exposed to nothing but the dead and the undead (Silas), he still wants to kill Jack out of revenge for murdering his parents. It does not make sense that a boy that has grown up surrounded by nothing but death (he lives in a graveyard!) would still consider death a tool by which to achieve revenge. Gaiman did not show Bod to be at all resentful of being surrounded by the dead; at most, Bod showed the normal signs of disagreement between child and authority, but it was not inclusive of them being dead. I felt unfulfilled and frustrated at the conclusion of the book as well.

Again, as we discussed in class today, the Jacks and the Honour Guard conjured up a larger scheme into which Bod was destined to play an important role. Unfortunately, this aspect of the story was also not fleshed out. I think Silas would have been a good character to provide further explanations for this larger world of The Graveyard Book, but instead his character remains painfully reserved and guarded. Also, why does Gaiman never come out and say that Silas is a vampire? He labels him as such in every other indirect way, but never actually calls him one. Was he concerned about this book being put in the "vampire book" category?

Though this was an entertaining story, I still feel as though I am waiting for something to happen. I still feel like there are loose ends that need to be tied up. This is certainly not the tidy ending that we get with Holes, but I wonder if Gaiman truly intends this sort of ambiguity in the ending. In our small group discussion today, we were saying how this ending savors of a sequel to come. If one ever does come, I will be interested to read it.