This month, I’m participating in a read-along of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, as part of R.I.P.  We’re looking at a few chapters a week, with no specific questions for each post.  This week’s discussion is on the last two chapters.  See my first post here.

So much to love in these last two chapters–and so much to be desperately sad about!  Since we’re talking about the end, there will be spoilers…  Warning duly noted, let’s jump in!

Chapter seven is practically a novella, and right from the title, “Every Man Jack,” it promises us resolutions to the arching plot of the book.  I love how this chapter ties bits and pieces together from almost every earlier, disparate chapter.  A teenage Scarlett (chapter two) comes back to town, and finds her way to the graveyard and to Bod.  She also meets Mr. Frost, a soft-spoken academic…who in a brilliant twist turns out to be the man Jack.  I love that too–and you’d think I’d remember it!  But I didn’t, so I got to be surprised again.  This is why I enjoy rereading.

Meanwhile, Silas has disappeared from the graveyard on mysterious business.  We find out that he’s with Miss Lupescu (chapter three) and other comrades in a desperate fight against a group of enemies.  And I love that we have a last stand featuring a mummy, a werewolf and (though it’s never said, it’s pretty obvious) a vampire.  I love that we get all the classic horror monsters, and in this case they get to band together and be the heroes.  Love that.  I do have to admit, though, that parts of this confused me.  It eventually becomes clear they’re fighting the Jacks, but exactly where and how…I found that muddled.

Back at the graveyard, Bod finally has to confront not only the man Jack but several of his associates, the creepy men from that rather creepy convention we saw in the Interlude.  I love their names: Jack Dandy, Jack Nimble, Jack Tar.  I don’t get Jack Ketch–is that a reference I don’t know?  I love that Bod has to use all his knowledge and friendships from growing up in the graveyard to protect himself and Scarlett–he makes use of the ghoul gate (chapter three), gets help from Liza the witch (chapter four) and ultimately uses his experience of the Sleer (chapter two) to defeat the man Jack.

I love that Bod has to really embrace who he is as a child of the graveyard–realizing that he doesn’t need to “learn” his name.  He is Nobody Owens.  He uses all that he’s learned to protect himself and his friend.  And I love that Gaiman manages to handle all the men Jack without Bod actually killing any of them.  As a writer, I know that requires much more creativity than just killing the villain.

I am desperately, desperately sad about Scarlett.  Bod felt so drawn to her, and she was his only human friend…and then she becomes afraid of him…!  It’s such a tragic twist, that in the process of embracing his own identity and vanquishing his enemy, Bod ends up losing his friend.  He protected her, and then she rejects him for it.  I love the emotional tug of it–brilliant storytelling–while being so sad for him, and so disappointed that Scarlett couldn’t make the leap to accept him.

Chapter eight is very bittersweet as well.  Almost an epilogue chapter, Bod is growing up and that means leaving the graveyard.  It’s so sad that he can no longer see this community that he’s grown up in, while at the same time it’s exciting that he’s going to go explore the world beyond the graveyard.  The ghosts and the graveyard become a metaphor for childhood as he has to leave it behind to become an adult.

I get the metaphor, and it’s effective.  But I do wish the graveyard could still be there for him to go back to, the way some of the joys and wonder of childhood can still be found by adults.  And also, the idea of a sixteen year old boy with scarcely any experience of the world going out into the world alone–it sets off all kinds of screaming alarms in my head.  Silas, this is not responsible guardianship!  At least take him on a Grand Tour before sending him off by himself!

Though on the other hand…Bod set off into the world alone as a toddler, and made his way to the graveyard.  Now, at sixteen, he’s continuing that journey.

And I love his last exchange with Silas.  Love.

And I love to think that someday, after a long life full of lots of adventures and meeting people who won’t run away, I love to think that Bod comes back to the graveyard.

I’d also love to see a sequel about Bod’s adventures in the world.  Such potential for so much more.

In the meantime, I have thoroughly enjoyed taking a leisurely trip through this book again, and loved all the thought-provoking discussion on everyone’s blogs.  Big thank you to Carl for hosting, and to everyone for all your wonderful thoughts!

This month, I’m participating in a read-along of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, as part of R.I.P.  We’re looking at a few chapters a week, with no specific questions for each post.  This week’s discussion is on chapters 4-6.  See my first post here.

I want to start by saying I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone else’s thoughts on the book; it’s definitely made me think about new aspects of the story, or consider some angle I hadn’t thought of.

For instance, I’ve seen some comparisons to Tim Burton–and I can completely see that!  There’s a very Burtonesque aspect to the depiction of the ghosts and the supernatural beings, who come across in some ways as more “alive” and engaging than the living characters.  That’s the entire focus of Corpse-Bride, and we see it here too.  Bod’s friends and loved ones are all dead or supernatural.  In this section of the book particularly, we see Bod venture out among living people–who are far less friendly and much more threatening.

This line of thought has also led me to very much want an animated movie (or maybe miniseries, it’s so episodic) of the book–screenplay by Neil Gaiman and directed by Tim Burton.  Obviously that would mean Johnny Depp as the voice of Silas, Helena Bonham Carter as the voice of the Lady on the Grey, and possibly Christopher Lee as the voice of the man Jack.  So if it ever happens, remember–you saw it predicted here!

Anyway, on to this section of the book…

I think Chapter 4 is one of my favorite chapters.  Bod meets the ghost of Liza, who was drowned and burned (both) as a witch and buried without a marker.  He decides that he wants to buy her a headstone, and ventures out of the graveyard to find a place that sells them.  I love Liza, who is so up and down and friendly and spooky all together.  I love that Bod wants to get her a headstone just because it’s right for her to have one.  It would be so easy to make her really nice or a perfectly innocent victim.  Then it would still be admirable, but somehow I think it would make his action less.  It would become an act of charity, or simpler in some way.  As-is, I think he’s doing it just because it’s right.

Chapter 5 is about “the dance Macabray,” the rare night when the dead and the living gather in the old town and dance together.  I love the eeriness of that concept, and I love the descriptions of the unearthly music and the magical dance.  I do have to say that as someone who normally pronounces macabre as “ma-cob,” the constant use of “Macabray” made me wince…but I looked it up and apparently there are multiple correct pronunciations.  Maybe it’s a British/American thing.

After Chapter 5, we have a brief interlude that shows us the man Jack again, though it doesn’t tell us much except that he’s still after Bod.  He’s a convocation, and even though the speaker is talking about philanthropic work, the mere fact of the man Jack’s presence makes me deeply suspicious about this group.  And I am reminded of a group in The Sandman Chronicles.  There was a kind of murderers convention, especially for really twisted murderers.  That was aroundwhen I stopped reading those graphic novels, so it’s just as well we don’t get more specifics here about the man Jack’s group…

Chapter 6 sees Bod attempting again to venture out of the graveyard, this time to go to school.  There are some fantastic things in here–I mean, he uses graveyard powers to fight bullies!  Love that!  Though I do think Silas could have been a little more proud of him, even if it was a bit stupid.

As touched on above, Bod meets far more frightening people among the living than he does in the graveyard, and I love that inversion of expectations.  It’s also interesting that Bod doesn’t decide to hide among the ghosts–he still feels drawn towards the living.  There’s a lovely bit (which of course I can’t find right now!) when Silas talks about how, for the living, there are always possibilities, always the potential for growth and change and making an impact on the world.

That’s my philosophical thought for this section. 🙂  I believe the next (final) section will be tying up some of the background threads from the beginning of the book, and I’m looking forward to seeing it all come together.

And, of course, to seeing everyone else’s thoughts on this part of the book!

This month, I’m participating in a read-along of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, as part of R.I.P.  We’re looking at a few chapters a week, with no specific questions for each post.  This week, a discussion on the first three chapters.

I’ve read The Graveyard Book before, but it’s been a few years and some of the details have gone fuzzy.  I do remember the shadowy feel of the book, and that I enjoyed it!  So I’m looking forward to digging into in greater depth.  (I suspect there’s a pun somewhere in that “digging in” phrase…but we’ll just move along…)

For those not familiar with the book, it tells the story of Bod, a living orphan who is being raised by a community of ghosts.  The first chapter describes how this situation came about, and the next two share a couple of Bod’s childhood adventures.

The first thing that struck me on picking this up again was the pictures.  The first few pages of each chapter are illustrated with wonderful black and white drawings that set the shadowy tone of the book so well.

Gaiman makes a very interesting choice by starting us out in the point of view of a murderer, the man Jack who killed Bod’s family.  What’s particularly remarkable is that he manages such a deft balance of starting us in an unbelievably horrible situation–but I don’t feel inclined to slam the book and walk away.  It is horrible, and it’s certainly dark and creepy (just the phrase “the man Jack” is so creepy), but it never quite becomes grotesque or too twisted.  And if you’ve read the Sandman graphic novels, you know Gaiman is capable of going there!  As it is, this sets up a wonderful darkness without scaring squeamish me off of the book.

I also love that it’s the living man who’s frightening–the ghosts are quite homey and pleasant.  They have a close community in the graveyard, with each ghost living in his or her respective crypt, all going about much the same community relations that they had in life.  And why not?

In Chapter Two, Bod makes a human friend, a little girl named Scarlett whose mother thought it made sense to bring her to play in a graveyard (a nature reserve, technically).  The two of them venture into a dark depth of the graveyard and encounter very strange and sinister creatures.  I enjoyed some of the contrast between Bod and Scarlett, but wish Gaiman had done more with that.  Ultimately they both end up not being afraid of what appears to be a monster–and I totally get that Bod is used to the strange and the supernatural, but I don’t understand why Scarlett, as a normal little girl, calms down remarkably quickly.  Perhaps I’m just meant to take her as being special too.

My favorite thing about Scarlett, though, is probably that she thinks Bod is an imaginary friend.  What a wonderfully fuzzy margin between reality and imagination!

In Chapter Three, Bod gets a new tutor, Miss Lupescu (whose name makes her secret fairly obvious), and ends up captured by ghouls.  The best thing about the ghouls is their names.  They all receive new names when they become ghouls, names which properly reflect the high esteem ghouls hold themselves in: names like “the famous writer Victor Hugo” or “the Bishop of Bath and Wells” or “the 33rd President of the United States.”  And they’re never shortened.

So far, the book is quite episodic, with each chapter almost a self-contained short story.  I do seem to recall, however, that threads begun in one place will come back in another, and it’s going to be fun to watch that weaving.  And the short story nature makes this good for a read-along!