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Gravepyres was sent to me for review as a young adult novel, which it most emphatically is not. Once I recalibrated my expectations to middle-grade, the nice parts of the book began to shine. Anita Roy expends energy in making the story feel representative, by using a diversity of names with gay abandon, making the universality of it quite clear. The story follows a young boy called Jose and his adventures in Deadland. Now, we’re never told exactly how old Jose is or what happened to him back in the Land of the Living, but we arrive, with him, at Gravepyres, to be met by the most charming character in the whole book: a young girl named Mishi, who is ostensibly his guide, a buddy of sorts, there to help him adjust to his new world.

Mishi is quirky, has trouble with spelling and pronunciation, and she enthusiastically rushes Jose about, without explaining anything to him. She also has trouble remembering anything from the previous day after she’s slept (or, rather, horizontalled) the night though. This makes her a strange guide though, because even in Chapter 5, the reader isn’t quite sure what is going on, which can make the book hard going. Jose is completely bewildered by his lessons, and as he sits through them in a daze, we feel the same, never really understanding what those classes are about, or what they have to do with learning to be dead. This new world is generously sprinkled with bad puns though, which are most giggle-worthy (good mourning is my favourite), and kept my attention from wandering too far.

Poor lost Jose wants nothing more than to go home, back to his mother, especially after he has some kind of flashback to what is probably the moment of his death and he hears his mother wail in grief. He then sets off on a quest to find a way back to the Land of the Living, with Mishi tagging along, and ends up solving the great problem the teachers are trying to figure out along the way. The kids have a beautiful trek through nature and meet a fantastic beast and an adorable hermit, and the inevitable villains. All is satisfactorily resolved though, and everyone’s story, including that of Jose’s mum, comes to an acceptable ending.

While overall an entertaining book filled with whimsy, silly jokes and safe adventures, there are some things about the book that sadly fall short. Why are the bad guys apparently cockney, when much of the ethos of the book is trying to evoke some kind of Indian feeling? Many questions remain unanswered: Who is Mishi? What is her story? Why does Jose find it so easy to leave her? Why did Jose die? What exactly is plastification? Where did the bad guys enter this world from and what is their connection to the Land of the Living?

But, most of all, I was conscious as I read of a wish that the book would try to engage with the deeper and more painful themes around its triggering event—that Jose died. It flirts with his feelings on the subject, but they are never articulated as more than homesickness, and the occasional flash of the events in the Land of the Living. Within the whimsical and strange world of Gravepyres, with its delightful cast of nutty characters, and against the backdrop of irreality as it were, it would be possible to touch on the great pain, sorry and loss attendant on death. It is a wonderful opportunity to talk about death and change and family, but Roy chooses not to, turning it into a semi-romp instead. This is a book that entertains; it could have done much more.

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