Inspired by another thread, feedback on my book please

[AspiringAuthor101]

I’d appreciate some feedback - my book is my invented dramatisation of the lives and deaths of people buried in my village graveyard.

I’ve researched their deaths, and were possible lives, with added social history interwoven as the story develops across centuries.

This graveyard has millionaires and penniless homeless, political legends and, as my open chapter’s main character shows, a 14-year-old who dies in an industrial accident. In my book the dead gather in the cemetery to share their life stories, and in chapter one Maggie “chats” to the millionaire in the grave opposite her, a man who changed world history in the Industrial Revolution and created much of our present.

I suspect, if popular at all, it will be with a hyper local audience, but it has been fascinating for me to do the research.

OPENING CHAPTER

She sits on the warm mossy grass just inside his grave, her back resting against the stone wall topped with iron railings.
The generous plot is 12 feet square, so there’s ample room to stretch her thin, gangly legs out in front of her while she makes looping daisy chains, the long tendrils snaking out over her cream linen shroud.
“You do know you killed me, don’t you?” she asks conversationally. For a while he says nothing, just letting the breeze fill the space between them.
Then gently, with mild exasperation only touching the edges of his patience, he answers: “We’ve been through this before Maggie. You know I didn’t, couldn’t have, as, my dear young lady, I was dead nearly 100 years before you were born.”
Maggie McIntosh, forever 14, sighs theatrically.

I love this idea, I'd definitely read it.

That’s the plan

I haven’t worked on it all summer, I need a few days of poor weather to get me back on it.

Too wordy and a bit flowery in the descriptive details (could have ended second paragraph at 'long gangly legs'). I like the third and fourth paras, but in the fifth the 'sighed theatrically' sounds like a stage direction.

Thank you @mondaytosunday , negative feedback also very welcomed (and probably needed).

It needs a story. Is it like linked short stories about the characters or is it a novel? Either way, you need a story, which I'm not seeing here. What's the reason they're gathering? What do they want and what's stopping them getting it? What's the problem?

If it's just fictionalised biographies then it will be boring, regardless of how good the writing is.

I’ve deliberately chosen graves where the deceased died at least 100 years ago, to avoid my narrative hurting anyone still alive who knew them.

I was wondering about that so glad you mentioned it.
For clarification: Is this just the first part of the first chapter, or the entire first chapter as an 'opening'? Either way, I like it, I'm just wondering.

Sorry if it sounded negative - I was a production editor I'm used to editing copy (not novels but for magazines).

I feel like the 'show don't tell' thing applies a bit although it feels like with some editing you have a good idea and decent writing. Like it's spelling it out about the size of the grave.

Sounds good, I would read it

Thanks all - for those who asked. This is just the first few oars of the first chapter, there’s a blurb to scene set:

When you’re dead there’s no time left for anger or acrimony; instead, across the centuries, the dead of xXxXx Cemetery share their life stories with one another

I am curious to hear more, yes. One concern though. Do the dead simply tell their stories to other graveyard occupants? If so, I would prefer it if you actually went back in time and ‘showed’ the stories, rather than told them. Have you read Lucinda Riley’s Seven Sisters series? She goes back to the time the story is set and shows how it unfolds, much more preferable style that read someone relaying a past happening.

I think you could lose a few adjective and adverbs to make it more powerful.