The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
That was one hell of a book really! Neil Gaiman trough and trough and not one page that didn't intruge. And there are some gorgeous drawings by Dave McKean too, just simple but still amazing.
The story in short is of a boy, whose family is killed by the man Jack. The man Jack lets the little boy get away, and he is taken in by a pair of ghosts and lives his whole life in the graveyard, learning to do things the ghosty way.
The book itself is really good, I still haven't figured out if it's an adult book or a youth book, but I think it works for both just as well! You see the world trough the eyes of a child, who has never met his real parents but been brought up by two ghosts and a guardian who are not dead, neither alive, who provides food and other things the ghosts can't find or get because they can't leave the graveyard. In the end of the book, the boy lives a happy life at the graveyard, and he is meeting his first real person at the age of approximatley five years old. After that his meetings with the girl, who later moves away with her parents, the boy wants to see more of he world, his hunger for learning new things deepens. He starts to get an urge to get out of the graveyard.
The book reminds a lot of Neil Gaimans other books, even if the subject are different you get the same feeling when reading the book you get when you read for example Coraline or American Gods. There is something about the books that makes it off for being a real world, but the books are still in the real world and the signs of it being mainly intrusive fantasy with a touch of estranged fantasy is very obvious in all the books by the author. You find them in the form (in Graveyard book) that the boy lives in a perfectly fine graveyard in modern Great Britain where the ghosts teach him to fade and dreamwalk where those things are normal for him would be exceptional for a normal person, but for him who has never been outside it and lived a normal life, going to school is something spectacular.
My personal thoughts on the book is that it is amazing, I got a problem with the girl showing up from nowhere again, but that is such a stupid thing to get hung up so that I won't even bother to think of it anymore. Also, I think the story is well written and very interesting with the chapters beeing of different parts of his life, and not how many books can be when something happens in the childhood of the main character and jump 15-20 years in the life of him/her but this took just a few years at a time and you could see how the boy grew, how he learnt stuff and how he became who he was in the end of the book, also I think it was a fun twist that he actually lost his powers at the end of the book, as it makes me wonder if there is something about kids, that adults can't see, that their fantasy worlds might not always be a fantasy world...
That was one hell of a book really! Neil Gaiman trough and trough and not one page that didn't intruge. And there are some gorgeous drawings by Dave McKean too, just simple but still amazing.
The story in short is of a boy, whose family is killed by the man Jack. The man Jack lets the little boy get away, and he is taken in by a pair of ghosts and lives his whole life in the graveyard, learning to do things the ghosty way.
The book itself is really good, I still haven't figured out if it's an adult book or a youth book, but I think it works for both just as well! You see the world trough the eyes of a child, who has never met his real parents but been brought up by two ghosts and a guardian who are not dead, neither alive, who provides food and other things the ghosts can't find or get because they can't leave the graveyard. In the end of the book, the boy lives a happy life at the graveyard, and he is meeting his first real person at the age of approximatley five years old. After that his meetings with the girl, who later moves away with her parents, the boy wants to see more of he world, his hunger for learning new things deepens. He starts to get an urge to get out of the graveyard.
The book reminds a lot of Neil Gaimans other books, even if the subject are different you get the same feeling when reading the book you get when you read for example Coraline or American Gods. There is something about the books that makes it off for being a real world, but the books are still in the real world and the signs of it being mainly intrusive fantasy with a touch of estranged fantasy is very obvious in all the books by the author. You find them in the form (in Graveyard book) that the boy lives in a perfectly fine graveyard in modern Great Britain where the ghosts teach him to fade and dreamwalk where those things are normal for him would be exceptional for a normal person, but for him who has never been outside it and lived a normal life, going to school is something spectacular.
My personal thoughts on the book is that it is amazing, I got a problem with the girl showing up from nowhere again, but that is such a stupid thing to get hung up so that I won't even bother to think of it anymore. Also, I think the story is well written and very interesting with the chapters beeing of different parts of his life, and not how many books can be when something happens in the childhood of the main character and jump 15-20 years in the life of him/her but this took just a few years at a time and you could see how the boy grew, how he learnt stuff and how he became who he was in the end of the book, also I think it was a fun twist that he actually lost his powers at the end of the book, as it makes me wonder if there is something about kids, that adults can't see, that their fantasy worlds might not always be a fantasy world...
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