“The Graveyard Book” by Neil Gaiman is a captivating and imaginative tale that seamlessly weaves fantasy, mystery, and coming-of-age elements. The story of Nobody Owens, raised by ghosts in a graveyard after a tragic event, is poignant and enchanting. Gaiman’s rich, atmospheric writing creates a vivid world that draws readers in effortlessly. The characters, both living and supernatural, are well-developed and endearing.
“The Graveyard Book” is split into eight chapters and separated into halves by an interlude.
Chapter 1: Nobody Comes to the Graveyard
In the story’s introduction, the Man Jack has just murdered three members of a family of four. He is missing one of his targets and searches for the missing person. It is a baby who wandered from the nursery, by some miraculous fate, downstairs, out into the street, and into a graveyard up the hill at the end of the road. The killer pursues the baby into the graveyard but is turned away by the graveyard caretaker, a vampire called Silas. There is an initial disagreement among the ghosts in the graveyard about whether to keep the baby, but they are convinced by the Lady on the Grey. The baby boy is adopted by the ghosts Mr. and Mrs. Owens as their child; he is named Nobody (Bod) and is given the Freedom of the Graveyard.
Gaiman is well-known for his ability to blend the magical and the mundane, and he uses this skill well in “The Graveyard Book.” An avuncular vampire as the caretaker of a grave is one such creation that mixes normal and zany to great effect.
Chapter 2: The New Friend
Bod grows up in a graveyard. Because he is given the Freedom of the Graveyard, he can pass through solid surfaces, see in the dark, and go anywhere he fancies within the graveyard.
One day, he finds a girl who visits the graveyard with her mother, and they strike up a conversation away from the view of her mother. Her name is Scarlett, and she is the first person he communicates with from the outside world. Bod takes her on a graveyard tour. They wander into an old crypt. An apparition called itself The Sleer tries to frighten them, but Bod stands his ground. The Sleer asks if Bod will be his master, but Bod is uninterested. When they finally leave the crypt, Scarlett finds her parents frantic and the police searching for her, fearing she has gone missing. They take her home.
Chapter 3: The Hounds of God
Silas is Bod’s guardian and his only contact with the outside world. He buys Bod meals from the outside world and arranges for Bod to get an education from the ghosts in the graveyard. One day, Silas informs Bod that he will be traveling. He puts Bod under the care of Miss Lupescu, a young woman with a severe expression, while he is away to look after and teach Bod. Bod complains to Silas that he does not like Miss Lupescu, and she, in turn, is somewhat harsh towards him.
After one of his hated learning sessions with Miss Lupescu during the period Silas is away, Bod wanders off and meets three ghouls, who convince him to follow them into their world through a portal—the doorway made by uttering special words and lifting a defaced headstone. Halfway through, Bod realizes that the ghouls plan to eat him or make him into one of them, and he cries out for help to the night gaunts he finds flying around in the ghoul world. Miss Lupescu rescues him in the form of a giant hound. She is a hound of God (or a werewolf), and she was alerted to his danger by the night gaunts who heard his cry for help. After this event, their relationship improves greatly, and when Silas returns, Bod asks that she continue teaching him.
The parallels between the Bod here and Mowgli in Kaa’s Hunting in “The Jungle Book” are stark. Both episodes have their charms, though. Gaiman pays homage in a creative way that does not precisely ape the original. The mood, setting, and characters are different enough.
Chapter 4: The Witch’s Headstone
Bod falls from an apple tree, sprains his ankle, and is treated by a teenage ghost. She is Elizabeth Hempstock, an accused witch who had been burned alive and buried in the unconsecrated part of the graveyard. In this place, suicides, robbers, and other undesirables are buried. Liza is sensitive about not having a gravestone. Out of a sense of compassion and gratitude, Bod takes some artifacts he found in the Sleer’s tomb to a pawnshop outside the graveyard to exchange them for a headstone for Liza. Unfortunately, the pawnbroker, Abanazer Bolgar, is Jack Frost’s contact and locks him up to deliver him to Jack. With the help of Liza, who had followed him without his knowledge, Bod escapes the pawnbroker, taking with him the artifacts and a stone paperweight. He makes Liza a headstone with this paperweight, and she is satisfied. This episode marks the story’s turning point as it brings Bod outside the graveyard grounds for the first time and brings him to the fresh attention of Man Jack.
Chapter 5: Danse Macabre
One winter, Bod finds the ghosts in the graveyard, and the town’s citizens are engaged in a flurry of activity. They would not tell him what they were preparing for except that it was the Danse Macabre. At night, members of the town wearing flowers picked from the graveyard come up from the town and dance in pairs with the ghosts of the graveyard. At the end of the dance, the Lady on the Grey appears. Bod notices Silas does not dance. When the townspeople return, they seem dazed. Bod learns that those alive do not remember the dance, and he is discouraged from speaking about the dance. Silas, neither alive nor dead, cannot participate in the dance.
Interlude: The Convocation
The story takes a break from Bod to focus on a convention, but this is a key point, introducing the larger conflict of which the murder of Bod’s family is a background. This is a meeting of Jacks, and Jack Frost, who killed Bod’s family, is one of them. They discuss many things, but we learn that they urgently need to kill Bod to prevent a prophecy that foresaw their destruction and that the Honor Guard, which Silas and Miss Lupescu belonged to, is destroying their bases around the world, the central but hidden conflict of the book. The organization is disappointed in Jack Frost for his failure, and he promises to finish off Bod soon.
I appreciate Gaiman’s adding the context of a worldwide conflict between colossal forces of good and evil as a background for Bod Owen’s contention with the Man Jack. Otherwise, it would be hard to make us understand why a hardened killer is hellbent on eliminating a baby he missed killing over a decade ago.
Chapter 6: Nobody Owens School Days
The story returns to Bod. Silas returns from a trip and is angry at Bod for leaving the graveyard. He has a big quarrel with Bod over leaving the graveyard. Bod wants to explore the world, but Silas wants to protect him from the man Jack in the graveyard. They reach a compromise that he will not make any waves outside, and Silas allows him to begin school.
He initially tries to keep a low profile at school but intervenes when he finds bullies taking advantage of smaller schoolmates. This brings undue attention to him, something Silas warned against, and the situation escalates. He is forced to withdraw from school.
Chapter 7: Every Man Jack
Scarlett moves back from Scotland to the Bod’s town with her mother, who is now divorced. She does not like the move and is very exasperated when she misses her bus and finds herself in front of the graveyard. Curious, she enters the graveyard and finds an old man who introduces himself as Jay Frost, a historian studying headstones. He gives her a ride home, becomes friends with her mother, and agrees to ride Scarlett to the graveyard.
Scarlett meets Bod again, and they rekindle their friendship. Bod, now obsessed with his family’s murder, asks Scarlett to help him research their death.
I wonder if Bod had enough reasons to want to fight the Jack of all Trades. Of course, they wanted him dead, but Silas, Miss Lupescu, and their organization were successfully destroying the Jack of all Trades, and he could easily have set up his life, protected by Silas elsewhere. Perhaps Bod had to fight them only because he had a vendetta.
Scarlett does so, even enlisting Jay Frost in the search, telling him she is doing it as a favor for a friend. She also realizes that Mr. Frost’s current residence is the same house in which Bod’s family was murdered.
Mr. Frost calls Scarlett to reveal he found some information and invites Scarlett and her friend to his house. When they come, Mr. Frost reveals himself to Bod as Jack Frost, the man who murdered his family. Bod locks him up, and he and Scarlett escape to the graveyard as four Jacks of All Trades call on Jack Frost. All the Jacks follow them in pursuit.
This pursuit leads to the story’s climax. With the help of craftily laid traps and the cooperation of the graveyard ghosts, Bod manages to trap all four Jacks of All Trades. Jack Frost tracks Scarlett into the Sleer’s Tomb and holds her hostage.
The Sleer, disturbed again, asks if Jack wants to be its master. Imagining that this means he will be granted power, Jack Frost says yes, and the Sleer takes him away.
I was genuinely surprised at Scarlett’s reaction to how Bod dealt with his would-be killers. I imagined she would be impressed with his quick thinking and resourcefulness and be happy that he overcame his enemies. From Scarlett’s viewpoint, Bod’s cold-blooded handling of the situation gave off psychopathic vibes, and for a girl with a normal upbringing like Scarlett, that was too much to take.
The aftermath of the fight marks the story’s falling action. Scarlett is scared of Bod and how coldly he dispatched his pursuers. Just returning from destroying the organization of Jacks, Silas removes her memory of Bod and convinces Scarlett and her mother to return to Scotland.
Silas reveals to Bod that Miss Lupescu died in her fight against the organization, much to his sadness.
Chapter 8: Leavings and Partings
In the book’s resolution, Bod turns fifteen and begins to lose the ability to see ghosts and move freely in the graveyard. Silas prepares a passport and provides money to send him away from the vineyard, which has ceased to be a home for him. He says the final goodbye to the graveyard and walks away.
