Book 30 - It's Neil Gaiman!

Book 30: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
(click here to purchase)

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.

A groundbreaking work from a master, 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. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark. [GoodReads]

I have been waiting months to read this book, Gaiman's newest release in quite some time. He never, ever fails to wow me. When Gaiman chooses to write about a given topic, he somehow has this rare gift that transports readers into his novels. Honestly, Gaiman doesn't only give readers something to read; he gives readers something to feel, to see, to hear, to taste, and even to smell. I've experienced each of these senses in every other novel Gaiman has written, but I've never in my life read anything like The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

In this shorter novel (roughly 178 pages), Gaiman creates a world mixed with childhood, imagination, folklore, and monsters (oh, and an extremely magical farm). When a man commits suicide in a young boy's family's car, a sinister force unlike anything you've ever imagined enters Sussex, England and wreaks havoc in his life. In each encounter this young boy has with the beast, I became so engrossed with the novel because it was as if I was experiencing these events as well (beatings, a near-drowning, bullying, etc.). The story's hero, little Lettie Hempstock, is a magical and mysterious being herself, and through her interactions with the boy, readers are overfilled with a sense of hope that all bad things come to an end if we just believe.

Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus (click here to read my review of her novel), was able to interview Gaiman about the release of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Here's what she said about it:

"I read 'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' in one sitting.

It is soaked in myth and memory and salt water and it is so,

so lovely. It feels as if it was always there,

somewhere in the story-stuff of the universe."

If you are interested Morgenstern's interview with Gaiman, click here to read it. 

 



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Neil Gaiman

Here are my other Gaiman favorites. You may also like:

The Graveyard Book
(click here to purchase)

The Graveyard Book - After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family . . .
Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages. [GoodReads]
THIS BOOK IS IN THE TOP FIVE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME!!!

American Gods
(click here to purchase)

American Gods - Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm or preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.
Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, AMERICAN GODS takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what and who it finds there... [GoodReads]





Coraline
(click here to purchase)

Coraline - Coraline's often wondered what's behind the locked door in the drawing room. It reveals only a brick wall when she finally opens it, but when she tries again later, a passageway mysteriously appears. Coraline is surprised to find a flat decorated exactly like her own, but strangely different. And when she finds her "other" parents in this alternate world, they are much more interesting despite their creepy black button eyes. When they make it clear, however, that they want to make her theirs forever, Coraline begins a nightmarish game to rescue her real parents and three children imprisoned in a mirror. With only a bored-through stone and an aloof cat to help, Coraline confronts this harrowing task of escaping these monstrous creatures.
Gaiman has delivered a wonderfully chilling novel, subtle yet intense on many levels. The line between pleasant and horrible is often blurred until what's what becomes suddenly clear, and like Coraline, we resist leaving this strange world until we're hooked. Unnerving drawings also cast a dark shadow over the book's eerie atmosphere, which is only heightened by simple, hair-raising text. Coraline is otherworldly storytelling at its best. [GoodReads]

The Sandman, Volume 1
(click here to purchase)

The Sandman, Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes - GRAPHIC NOVEL: A wizard attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. Fearful for his safety, the wizard kept him imprisoned in a glass bottle for decades. After his escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power. On the way, Morpheus encounters Lucifer and demons from Hell, the Justice League, and John Constantine, the Hellblazer. This book also includes the story "The Sound of Her Wings" which introduces us to the pragmatic and perky goth girl, Death. Collecting The Sandman #1–8 [GoodReads]

 

 

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