Okay, I hereby officially declare Neil Gaiman one of my favourite writers of all time! What imagination. And what beautiful storytelling.
As 'the man Jack' murders all the members of a family, a toddler - the sole survivor - manages to escape to a nearby graveyard where the resident ghosts, persuaded in part by the Lady on the Grey, decide to raise the baby. It is named Nobody Owens, as "He looks like nobody except himself".
Granted the 'Freedom of the Graveyard', and helped by such key characters as Mr. and Mrs. Owens, the first ones to discover the baby and become its official parents; caretaker Silas, part living, part dead; Miss Lupescu, one of the Hounds of God; Elizabeth Hempstock, an unjustly-executed witch, this is the story of the first 15 years of Bod's life. What really took the story to a whole new level of awesome was its storytelling. Each chapter is a new adventure through the experience of which, we see the passage of time as Bod learns and grows into a unique person with qualities of both the living and the dead. Yes, he can stand up to the class bully, and yes, he can also Fade, Haunt and Dream Walk!
A visual treat, the story moves so fluently in and out of the corners and crevices of the graveyard. Up a hill where sits a great vampire, a member of the Honour Guard. Down a secret chamber, where the creature Sleer has been waiting for thousands of years for his "Master" to come and reclaim him. Around an abandoned patch of land where a denounced witch gets a belated headstone ... And of course that gorgeous Danse Macabre, the one day in the year the dead enter the living world.
What is traditionally a morbid topic, Gaiman turns into a fantastic adventure that is cheerily light at times and intensely dark at others.
This is the reason I read. For the wonder of a new world and the excitement of new discoveries.
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