The Gravedigger

by Rob Magnuson Smith

Reviewed by Dr. Susan K. Hedahl

A book featuring a bleak countryside scene on its cover, and entitled The Gravedigger, sadly and darkly invites reading given the universal note it sounds.  This is a first novel for writer Rob Magnuson Smith and it is a stark, compassionate, funny and quirky work. He has chosen a vocation and a character both of which are unforgettable.

Henry Bale, a middle-aged gravedigger, is the protagonist.  He works in a small English village named Chalk, a place of both ruinous and positive features.  In this non-descript and mostly forgotten place, Henry is rapidly falling into an existential state of desuetude.  His abilities to love and interact with others are failing in his chosen self-isolation.  The death of his old Jack Russell terrier and the irritating yet life-giving words of his still feisty father, now lodged in a care center, bring slow realization to Henry that all is not well.

The arrival of a school teacher, Caroline, changes everything.  She admires Henry’s blunt and honest qualities and he falls in love, awkwardly, reluctantly.  As their relationship unfolds in the village, it does so against a backdrop of Henry’s work.  The reader is introduced to the contours, history and hazards of grave-digging in ancient English churchyards.  

Smith’s writing is very graphic and pictorial.  The people, the village, the weather, the animals and the events are all described in ways that bring out the uniqueness of each of Smith’s subjects.  There is a radiance in his descriptions of the ordinary in this book.

Near the end of the novel there is bitter and over-whelming event which re-molds the character and life of Bale – yet again.  The reader is overwhelmed with the “What next then?” question as a result.