Growing Up Among the Friendly Dead
Neil Gaiman is one of the great storytellers of our time, and The Graveyard Book is one of the best coming-of-age stories I have read. More of a collection of linked short stories than a novel, it recounts the events of the childhood of Nobody Owens, a living child raised by ghosts in a graveyard after his family is murdered. There is an assortment of wicked villains, kindly monsters, and well-meaning ghosts. Valuable lessons are learned and it gets quite sentimental at times, not that there is anything wrong with that.
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