Nobody Owens, called Bod, has lived most of his life in a graveyard. After his whole family was murdered by a strange man called Jack, the baby Bod was adopted by a ghost couple and a mysterious person who is neither alive nor dead became his guardian. Bod grows up in the graveyard, befriending the ghosts, discovering ancient and hidden treasure, just avoiding the clutches of ghouls, and making eventual forays into the world of the living. But when he leaves the graveyard, he always finds himself in danger--small dangers, and then the larger danger of the man Jack, who is still out there and looking for him.
Well, now that I've started with the ending, let's go back a bit, shall we? One of my favorite features of the book is the gray area. It's not something that you see a lot in a book aimed at ten-year-olds; even better, the ambiguity and messy endings are clear while remaining perfectly realistic. Not everyone is purely good or evil, sometimes your first friend hates you ten years later, people hide things, opinions and relationships change, people change. And that really is one of the central themes of The Graveyard Book: people change. More specifically, living people change. The dead do not, which is pointed out a few times, both directly and indirectly. It supports the other main theme, that life must be lived. That can't happen without change. There are other lovely points of uncertainty and things that go unresolved without being unsatisfying, because they ultimately lead to the book's fuzzy-edged, gray heart. For instance, what really is Silas? Everything indicates that he is some sort of vampire, but we don't know for sure. Why can Bod always see all of the ghosts except for Liza, who is frequently only a voice to him? What really happens to the man Jack? What exactly is the Sleer? What name did Bod originally have? Some of these questions have clues that point to an answer; others are completely open. And I loved that. Gaiman is a wonderful writer in general, but he excels at ambiguity in The Graveyard Book.
And talking of Gaiman's writing in general... The only book of his that I've read before this one was Coraline, and that was a long time ago. I don't think I knew he was British until reading The Graveyard Book, in which I began to detect Britishness before too long. His writing isn't complicated or fanciful, and that's part of what makes it so masterful. He doesn't need adornments because he is so good.