The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

 

Summary (from the publisher): 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.

Review: A man returns to his childhood home in Sussex, England and visits the farm at the end of the road. When he was seven, he had a series of remarkable encounters with a girl named Lettie Hempstock and her mother and grandmother. Although his memories of Lettie have faded, some of it comes flooding back. Forty years before, a man that was renting a room from the boy's parents killed himself on the farm. And his death unleashed an otherworldly darkness that threatened the little boy. And Lettie, wise beyond her years, promised to protect him. 

This was such a beautifully unusual book. It is otherworldly and darkly horrifying, in the way that children's nightmares are. It felt sort of like Stranger Things set in England, but more lyrical. I especially loved the agelessness of Lettie and her family, and the sense of depth and complexity to their knowledge and understanding. 

"I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world." 

Stars: 4