The Graveyard Book

This week I read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It was strange because it kind of felt like one of those books where there is no real plot it is just related stories and anecdotes from someone growing up like Louisa May Alcott's books. At the same time it felt like a novel with a single plot. After the book was a few pages written by the author about the process. This is what he wrote:
 "I wanted the book to be composed of short stories, because The Jungle Book was short stories. And I wanted it to be a novel, because it was a novel in my head. The tension between those two things was both a delight and a heartache as a writer."
No wonder that it felt the way it did. He definitely made it work though.
I also really enjoyed the premise of a little boy being raised in a graveyard by ghosts. And I liked how things like vampires and werewolves were portrayed in such a different light then they typically are.
At first I was disappointed that there was much more about Silas then there was about his parents, but when I talked to my sister about it she explained that when you are little parents are just there, they aren't exciting, so it is no wonder there wasn't much about them.
I thought the end was more sad then I was expecting though. He's only 16 and he can't go back... but I guess that is how growing up is, you can't go back. And this is what Gaiman said about that:
"I had set out to write a book about a childhood--it was Bod's childhood, and it was in a graveyard, but still, it was a childhood like any other; I was now writing about being a parent, and the fundamental most comical tragedy of parenthood: that if you do your job properly, if you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore."
This book definitely captured that feeling, because after all sometimes fiction is truer than reality.