Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane Author: Neil Gaiman

Inside the Book:

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 256
Genre: Coming of Age

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

I make things up and write them down. Which takes us from comics (like SANDMAN) to novels (like ANANSI BOYS and AMERICAN GODS) to short stories (some are collected in SMOKE AND MIRRORS) and to occasionally movies (like Dave McKean's MIRRORMASK or the NEVERWHERE TV series, or my own short film A SHORT FILM ABOUT JOHN BOLTON).

In my spare time I read and sleep and eat and try to keep the blog at www.neilgaiman.com more or less up to date.

My Review

I have to say that I found The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman to be a rather depressing book. The first half or so of the book focuses on all of the troubles and horrors that a young boy went through both natural and supernatural ones. I found myself horrified by the level of abuse and negligence displayed by the parents. I was originally looking forward to reading this book because of the supernatural elements, but after reading it I felt rather rung out and tired from all of the awful things that happened to the main character. I mean he was drowned, his kitten was killed and nobody offered him any comfort or care, he had nor friends and his classmates would not even go to his birthday. The book is well written and it does have a way of pulling you in, but it also drains the happiness and energy right out of you. I personally did not enjoy reading this book and I would have stopped part way through if I was not reading this for review.   I was sent this book for free for only my honest and unbiased review.