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Book Review of The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
smith-jones avatar reviewed on + 47 more book reviews


I started this book last night -08/17/13- and I couldn't put it down. Although it's only 189 pages, it felt it contained at least one hundred more.

The beginning is a bit unassuming and ordinary until the 7yr.old now a grown man going to his sister's house for a funeral turns a corner onto the lane of his old childhood's neighborhood.

The story engulfed me and brought back my own childhood fears and fantasies with it's monsters and benign forces and beings. It scared me too, I kept seeing the back of the book when I tried to get some sleep around 2:40 in the morning and I couldn't settle down. I kept turning on the lights and grabbing the book to keep on reading until I reach and part that seemed "safe" to go to sleep about.

Like the young boy in the story I could too immerse myself in books and live the stories in my mind so don't be surprised that I still do that and allow Mr. Gaiman to bring me along to the Hempstock Farm where the lane turns to the left and there is a pond that is really the Ocean that runs under the universe and that worlds like grains in a desert can be threatened, invaded and destroyed; a that there are boundaries between worlds that are fragile and that there are monsters that even monsters and old beings are afraid of.

The story did not disappoint me. It was more than I expected to be part of although I have been transported to similar ventures before. This one was very particular and precious -although not unique- in the realm of fantasy and I enjoyed it a great deal enough to give it 5 stars.

It did disturb me to the point I could not sleep well, I think I dreamed of those realms and the Ocean of the Origen and Knowledge -by the way this is the name I've given the pond. I understood what happened and how it happened, i just wish I could comprehend how Hempstock women came to be at the farm and why they chose that land.

This book will remain as part of my wish list and it will be worth a re-read.