Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book Review

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Janet Lewison's review of Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. ”

★★★★★

written by Janet Lewison on 31/10/2010

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.



The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.



The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet.



The street door was still open, just a little, where the knife and the man who held it had slipped in, and wisps of nighttime mist slithered and twined into the house through the open door.



The man Jack paused on the landing. With his left hand he pulled a large white handkerchief from the pocket of his black coat, and with it he wiped off the knife and his gloved right hand which had been holding it; then he put the handkerchief away. The hunt was almost over.







A truly sinister, insinuating opening! Has a disturbingly comic 'pulse' to this writing nd carries us, however reluctantly, along the corridors and rooms of this house, with Jack, the cruelly efficient( so he thinks) killer of a family we are only introduced to when dead.



The emphasis on the 'man' Jack, alerts us to his terrible aliveness and subtly reminds us that this book's title may be leading us, elsewhere: To the graveyard!



How cleverly too the inhumanity of the 'man' Jack, is intensified in the description of the knife's actions as being almost independent of the hand that wields it. Metonymy is a disturbing tool for creating a feeling of alienation as Dickens knew so very well. How we separate ourselves from our actions and feelings through this type of physical disassociation, blaming other things, other people and seeking to evade the weighty presence of responsibility. Metonymy gives us permisssion to be other than ourselves...







I am thrilled to read this book so far. It has a fertility of imagination that is darkly joyous and wittily terrifying. Little wonder that I had to read A Christmas Carol again alongside it. They compliment each other and seem to stroll about the other's narrative with grotesque ease!



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