The Ocean at the End of the Lane

About the Book: ​
Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Release Date: June 28, 2016
Publisher: William Morrow
Genre: Coming of Age
Format: Ebook/Paperback/Hardcover/Audio
 
UK National Book Awards 2013 “Book of the Year”
“Fantasy of the very best.” Wall Street Journal
 
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 where she once lived, 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.
 
A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly’s wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.
 
“[Gaiman’s] mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown.” New York Times Book Review

Review: 

Forty years after he has left his childhood home, a man returns for a funeral and reminisces about a childhood adventure he had with the young girl who lived at the house at the end of the lane.  Lettie Hempstock lived at the farm at the  end of the lane with her mother and grandmother.  Lettie always called their backyard pond her ocean.  Lettie took him under her wing and together they had amazing and dangerous adventures that involved magic, monsters and other worlds.  As an adult, when he sits at the pond that Lettie called an ocean, he is not quite sure if the adventures he remembers really happened or if he and Lettie had wonderful imaginations.


Fantasy and imagination combine for a wonderfully woven and absolutely captivating fairy tale.  Characters leapt off the page and were people that I would love to know.  Told mostly from the perspective of children, innocence and raw emotion dominate. I loved the tone of mystery, discovery and friendship.  The monsters, Hempstocks, fleas and varmints were created uniquely.  I loved that the three Hempstock women worked the farm and their form  of magic alone, completely without the need of men.  Neil Gaiman has once again created a magical world that sucked me in and made me wish that I could once again experience the wonders of childhood.  This is one of my new favorites!

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.  
 

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About the Author: 
Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and the story collections Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Trigger Warning. He is the winner of numerous literary honors, including the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. Originally from England, he now lives in the United States. He is Professor in the Arts at Bard College.
Visit his website at http://www.neilgaiman.com
 




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