Rebecca's Reviews > The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

“Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.”

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.

I adored this novel. Childhood is such a magical thing we're all bound to, and it is a wonder to look at it with adult eves. This is what the book is about: living, observing, creating memories that will inevitably become blurred bits. Being afraid, too. The narrative in the novel is beautiful and effortless. As I read, I felt a warm nostalgic feeling. This is a book you just open and dive in, straight into Lettie's ocean. Be prepared to discover the extraordinary.

There are fairytale vibes mixed with a little bit of uneasy horror. It reads like a weird fever dream that has you question the monsters you feared as a child.

This was my first Neil Gaiman. I am very excited to read more of his works.

Highly Recommend.