The Ocean at The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
After I finished The Ocean at The End Of The Lane I did’t know where to begin to review it. Words like  nostalgic, haunting, beautiful come to mind. Set in the English country side in this beautiful town-quiet creepy some what isolated and lonely. The nameless narrator tells the narrative of his life and a life changing event that alters him for the rest of his life. Which was beautifully penned in description and detail.
Gripes, as great a writer as Neil Gaiman is I question the addition of the sex scene to the book and though it suppose to be an adult book. The adult dynamic is sprinkled in the the story. I didn’t see the need for the light switch on his parents marriage, it cumbersome.
There is only so many words I can use to praise this book because I honestly was surprised I liked books in this genre aren’t usually appealing to me. I enjoyed being in this world for awhile except for the cumbersome bits. I gave The Ocean At The End Of The Lane a four out five. Its perfect if you want a break from the make believe world of vampires, werewolves, mermaid, etc. The adult bits are not sassy so I say 16 and up can give this a read.
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- Title: The Ocean at The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
- Published: June 18, 2013
- Publisher: William Morrow Books
- Genre: Adult Fiction
- Rating: 4/5
- Source: Local Library
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 181
- Buy: AmazonÂ
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 a 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.
A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Laneis 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. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly’s wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.