The Ocean at the End of the Lane

"Even if you are not familiar with the prodigious — and prolific — talent of Neil Gaiman, you’ll want to spend a novella’s worth of time inside the dark world at the heart of The Ocean At The End of the Lane. The book begins with a middle-aged man who goes back to his childhood home after a funeral, where he begins having recollections of a series of curious events. I think it would spoil the pleasure of the book to say more about its plot — there’s a brave girl, and a special boy, and a sacrifice — but at a mere 192 pages, it begs to be read twice to enjoy the sorrow and surprise of its ending. Although it’s been called a book for adults, what Gaiman is most deft at is describing the terrors, large and small, of childhood, and how those terrors linger and shape adults. “Truth is,” Gaiman writes, “there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, not in the whole wide world.”"