Johnny and the Dead (we'll call it JatD) is one of Pratchett's less popular books, or at least it certainly seems to be on here. It's the second book in his standalone series, Johnny Maxwell, and I suspect many are turned off by it not being part of Discworld, or by it being a YA book, or by the fact that the first book in the series, Only You can Save Mankind, didn't age terribly well (it's a book about people getting sucked into 90s video games, in a world where we have lots of existing, more in-depth fiction about people getting sucked into modern video games). But I've read JatD several times through now and I honestly consider it one of Pratchett's best, and one of his most insightful about life and death.
Note: This will contain some light spoilers, so fair warning if you want to go in blind. Heavier spoilers will be spoiler tagged.
The basic premise of JatD sounds pretty simple, and not even that original: a middle schooler named Johnny walks through a graveyard one day with his friends and discovers that he (and only he) can see and speak to the dead who have been interred there. While he's scared initially, he soon realizes that these people are still people -- they really just want someone to talk to, and to be kept updated on the world outside. But when he brings them a newspaper, they are shocked to find out that their cemetery is only days away from being torn down to build a corporate office park! So, the dead give Johnny a mission: to find some way, any way, to keep their home from being destroyed.
So, your standard young adult plot, right? Normal kid becomes unlikely hero and finds some daring and action-packed way to singlehandedly stop the evil development? Maybe by sabotaging bulldozers or scaring construction workers with a ghost costume? Wrong! The unexpected twist of this story, to me, is that the normal kid main character⊠pretty much stays a normal kid. He isn't a spy or an action hero, and he can't do anything by himself to change the course of a society. Pretty much all he can do is read, talk, and listen. Just by learning about the history of his own town, and by talking to people about events so local that barely anyone remembers or cares about them anymore, he has to get the tools he needs to make a difference.
The climax of the story is at a town council (err, Municipal Association) meeting, where Johnny needs to stop the corporate development from being authorized. Your typical YA protagonist might do something like throw a stink bomb, or steal a contract from someone while they aren't looking. But Johnny actually participates in the meeting, and tries to argue his case. And when someone tries to shut him out, he argues back. And after a while, people start listening to him. It might seem small, but to me this sends an important message to anyone reading. It reminds us that, even if they can be manipulated, and even if they intimidating and difficult to get into, democratic governments really are for and by the people, and anyone might be able to make a difference as long as they are willing to stand up for themselves and others who need it. Not enough people in the world truly believe this, even myself, and it's a very welcome reminder. And as a YA book, I love that it teaches young people that they still have power in society, not that they should be messing with construction sites and throwing stink bombs. It's something people need to know and that they should use whenever they have the opportunity.
The other notable thing about JatD is its unique take on the afterlife. In this world, when people die, they reappear as a ghost after their funeral, near where they are buried. Ghosts don't know much more than they did before they died, only that if they leave their resting place for too long, they might forget who they are. They also know that, someday, a Judgement Day will come, and on that day, they need to be ready. The occupants of the Blackbury Cemetery have spent almost a hundred years waiting for that judgement day, and when Johnny makes contact with them, they realize that there's a whole world out there that they could be experiencing. Soon enough, they begin to branch out, first by exploring the town, and then by venturing out across the larger world. After this journey, they do start to lose their physical forms, but start to remember other things: knowledge about the world outside our known universe, from before they were alive. By the end, they realize something: you yourself control when your own Judgement Day occurs. When each person is ready to move on from Earth, they are free to "ascend", "descend" or even go sideways and out of the universe completely. One, who is wracked by guilt from how he lived his life, chooses to remain on Earth, and Johnny thinks that, in some ways, he's actually created his own personal hell.
In a lot of ways, this is similar to life and afterlife on the Disc: there are many paths one can take after death, and once one's soul truly does leave the Disc, it's always treated as moving across the desert, onward into an unknowable next step. I really respect PTerry as he's one of very few authors able to write about death in a way that makes it sound like a natural and expected part of life, not an unwelcome and fearsome interruption from the things one is supposed to be doing. I don't actually believe that this is what happens after you die, but I would sure feel comforted if it was.
The other central theme of JatD is that it's okay to not be the best at something -- people, and the histories they create, have intrinsic value just by existing. The Blackbury Cemetery is full of people who were almost great, like Addison Fletcher, who invented the telephone a few years after Alexander Graham Bell did, William Stickers, who would have been Karl Marx if Karl Marx hadn't already been Karl Marx first, or Thomas Atkins, a soldier whose only medals were for surviving all the way through the Great War without even being injured, while all his friends died around him. This is a lot of the reason Johnny initially has trouble getting anyone to help save the cemetery: no one truly famous or important was buried there. Just⊠people from the town. But after a while, Johnny realizes that that is why the cemetery needs to be saved: these people made the town what it is today and lived full lives, and that is more than enough to make them worthy of being remembered. Life is precious just by being life. In the end, even after most of the dead have left, Johnny and his allies still follow through on restoring the cemetery, because he realized something important: the primary function of a cemetery isn't as place for the dead. It's a place for the living to remember and connect with those they have lost.
Reading this book, especially after Pratchett's biography, it's hard not to feel like this book drew from a deep well of his own personal experience. Pratchett himself grew up in a rural English town, and likely saw the gradual process of "modern" developments coming to these areas throughout his life, for better and for worse. He also would have known people who served in both world wars, and gradually seen their experiences and other local history fade into obscurity -- both due to the natural aging of people involved, and due to overshadowing by more dramatic national and global events. With how the town of Blackbury is portrayed in this book, it's easy to see that he greatly regretted this loss of local identity and culture. Without those, the book seems to say, it's impossible to be proud of where you come from, and your community will fall apart completely.
All in all, JatD is a really incredible book. While it's not overtly scary or heartbreaking, it has a certain sort of melancholy that comes from accepting that people have lived their lives the way they did and passed on. And yet, it also makes me feel a sort of cozy reassurance, that it's OK if I am never truly great or notable in my life. That it's enough to just be myself. I find JatD to be by far the best of the Johnny Maxwell series, and would highly recommend reading it if you haven't already. It can easily be read before the first book in the series, as it has only slight connections to its events, and is short enough to get through in a few afternoons. If you love the way that Discworld portrays death and the afterlife, what are you waiting for?
