The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Publisher: William Morrow
Published Date: June 18, 2013
Pages: 192
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0062255655

Sussex, England.  A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral.  Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother.  He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back.  And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road.  Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways.  The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy.   And Lettie – magical, comforting, wise beyond her years – promised to protect him, no matter what.

My Thoughts 

All I really have to say about this book is huh? I just didn't "get it" and not really even sure what to say about it.  I read the whole book, but what I actually absorbed...

I'm sure it was "haunting" and "magical" to those who enjoy Gaiman's work, this is the first novel (or rather novella) I have read of his and I'm not certain if I will read anymore.  Maybe the genre just isn't for me.  I found myself very lost during the magic parts of the story.

My Rating: «

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The reviews made here are my personal opinion. I’m not being paid to review any of these books. I am by no means a professional book reviewer or editor.  I do this for the love of books.