Book Review: Ocean At the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Hey guys! Today I am bringing Y'all a non-spoiler book review for The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman!
So without any more chatter let's get started.


From Goodreads:

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.


Critique:

I finished reading this book a few days ago and I needed some time for it to digest in my brain!
Neil Gaiman has such a mystical way of writing that it just sucks you in and holds on to you even when the book has ended.
Once the book had ended I felt sad almost as if my childhood had ended. that the magic somehow had ended.
one line that really sticks with me was when the man asked Lettie's grandmother: 

"And did I pass?"
The face of the old woman on my right was unreadable in the gathering dusk.
On my left the younger woman said,
"You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear."

This is a book that shows us that we should never stop dreaming, that we should never stop seeing oceans in ponds and that we should never, ever, stop seeing better worlds in the things we read. No matter how old we are never forget the magic that our child's eyes can see.

The pond that was an ocean speaks of the level of optimism that is inherent in childhood dreams. Everything seems better. Everything seems bigger and grander. Imagination makes the ordinary seem extraordinary and fantastic. 

It’s a book for the lost, for those who do not fit in with normal society. It is a book for those who would rather spend their days rather than interacting with other people. Humans are always disappointing and always hurt sometimes on purpose sometimes unthinkingly, books, however, do not. And our young hero is aware of this so he dreams up his own friends and draws upon the lessons he learnt through reading.

The friend he meets becomes his guardian against the forces that would destroy him and his family. 

She becomes a doorway into understanding an entirely new world.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a truly fantastic book in every way possible and I recommend it 100% for others to read!

Until next time my friends

                    Lynn