The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

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Publication date: 2013
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 178
My rating: 4 stars
Ages:16+

A middle aged man finds himself remembering a time in his childhood that he hadn't remembered before. A time that involved death, magic, the Hempstock women, and a pond that was an ocean.

If Neil Gaiman wrote a medical journal, it would read like a fairy story. I'm not sure what it is, but the simple nuances of his writing and his voice lend everything a sort of other worldly effect. Which just makes this book--which is other worldly--a story worth reading.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Ocean. Everything that Gaiman writes is so different from each other that I think it's hard to know what to expect. I think I thought that it would be just a man remembering something from his childhood (a la Guy in Your MFA, only better), but the addition of the Hempstocks, of the magic, made the story explode with color and imagination. In under 200 pages, this book was one of the best fantasy books that I had read in a while. There was no long description of the magic system, or background. It was simple, but intricate.

While this book may seem like a YA novel, I think that the themes and some of the situations makes it more adult.

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