The Graveyard Book

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celavie77
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Joined: 21 Nov 2011, 12:14
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The Graveyard Book

Post by celavie77 »

I want so badly to discuss this book! This one thing that's been bugging me is Scarlett and how she was able to read that magazine in the dark? And Dreamwalk? It seemed like it was leading up to some revelation but it didn't! And with her being afraid of the graveyard it seems unlikely that she'll turn out to have a special connection to it besides Bod.

I just finished reading this and I'm fairly smitten! It started off so slow, and the prose just wasn't engaging, but I fell in love with the Danse Macabre chapter - which I think is a really perfect chapter - and was happy to continue after that. Then the ending was wonderfully depressing and moving. At first I was very surprised it won both the Carnegie and Newberry Medal, which is a pretty big deal, but after finishing I think I understand. It is quite sweet.
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StephenKingman
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Post by StephenKingman »

celavie77 wrote:I want so badly to discuss this book! This one thing that's been bugging me is Scarlett and how she was able to read that magazine in the dark? And Dreamwalk? It seemed like it was leading up to some revelation but it didn't! And with her being afraid of the graveyard it seems unlikely that she'll turn out to have a special connection to it besides Bod.

I just finished reading this and I'm fairly smitten! It started off so slow, and the prose just wasn't engaging, but I fell in love with the Danse Macabre chapter - which I think is a really perfect chapter - and was happy to continue after that. Then the ending was wonderfully depressing and moving. At first I was very surprised it won both the Carnegie and Newberry Medal, which is a pretty big deal, but after finishing I think I understand. It is quite sweet.
Yes its a real breath of fresh air, not quite sure it deserves both awards but still a very unique and well written story, helped along by the fantastic illustrations. The ending was quite moving and i also really enjoyed the Danse Macabre scene, the enemies in the book were portrayed quite well for what appears as a childrens book. :D
You only live once.....so live!
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Shase2015
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Post by Shase2015 »

This was pretty excellent. It was also an extremely easy read as I read it hodgepodged in the middle of a busy day but it was still easy to pick up and leave off whenever. Well, good books has vampires. Not lots of good looking ones- to get the appropriate eerie faerie spooky mood you need one. And you must call him Silas. This book does well on that score; it also includes a graveyard of ghosts and a small boy who must be brought up in the graveyard by the spooks.

There's a quaint closed off feel to Gaiman's Coraline and this book is the same. It could have happened in nearly any time after the 18th or 19th centuries. It resembles Diana Wynne Jones like that and is totally different from J.K.R's Harry Potters which live squarely in the 20th-21st centuries. That delicate, cut off quality enhances the creepiness and the ghostliness of the mild horror in Coraline and flavours the fantasy in this book.

Other than this and the main plot line I have to say the book reminded me of the Jungle Books. Bod's child hood adventures are funnily similar to Mowgli's. He has to learn all the secret calls and pass words to ask for assistance (just like Mowgli), he meets the ghouls who sound like the bandar log (he runs away because of too many rules and meets the ghouls who keep telling him, "We are so great so clever, there's no body as smart as we. Join us and you can do whatever you like." He finds a great hidden treasure that leads to the death of the first humans who see it because it inflames avarice. Which makes me think that Gaiman didn't have to look too far for inspiration.

But characters like Silas all in velvety black ,"Silas only consumed one food and it was not bananas.", Nobody Owens dressed in a winding sheet, the ghosts' histories from dead Roman rulers to burned witches, and the graveyard's atmosphere a small, close place covered in a green gloom, not an inch to spare with folk history and tombs thick on the ground make this book a gem of a ghost story
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