The Graveyard Book
By Neil Gaiman
Bloomsbury, £12.99, 295 pages, £14.99, 312 pages (adult edition)
FT Bookshop price: £10.39/ £11.99

Characters in Neil Gaiman’s fantasy fiction inhabit a world of shadows and gloom but mostly they do not mope around wallowing in melancholy. They engage with the dark, or at the very least adopt a pragmatic attitude towards it. So it is with English youngster Bod, whose story forms the backbone of The Graveyard Book.