Sunday, August 3, 2014

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Pages: 181
Published: 2013
Challenges: I Love Libraries
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Magic Realism
Edition: Hardcover
Source: Library

Description: 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. (from Goodreads)

Thoughts: I really enjoyed this read.  I don't know why I particularly liked the book, but I suppose it had something to do with the fact that I was really tired when I read the book (read this during the latter portion of Dewey's Readathon in April) or the language was in such a way that honestly I didn't care about what where the book was going or maybe it was both.  But I liked the pacing of the book and how one could easily be drawn into the story and not really care to find deeper meaning.  I was so entranced with the book that very shortly into the book.  I had to basically suspend reality and not try to define what was real and what wasn't, especially since one really can't tell the difference and therefore reality became muddled.

Bottom line: I would recommend this book to most readers, but mostly to those who are fans of Gaiman, of magic realism and those that enjoy just a really good story.  Highly recommended.

Rating: 4.75/5

Pages for 2014: 7893

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