Book review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
By
Neil Gaiman
Narrated by Neil Gaiman

Publisher: HarperAudio
Pub. Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-0062263032
Duration5:48 hours

Genre: Fantasy
Source:
public library

Goodreads: Goodreads Choice winner for Fantasy (2013)

Buy Link

This book counts for the following Reading Challenge:

        2013 Audio Book Challenge

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

rating system

Review:

Apart from a cute children’s book, Chu’s Day, I had never read anything by Neil Gaiman, so I seized the occasion when I saw I could listen to it through my library audio book service.

I very rarely read fantasy, I can’t even recall what was the last fantasy book I read, but I got caught in the story right away through Gaiman’s voice. His narration is dreamy, hauntingly beautiful and irresistible, a bit like some of his dreadful characters, although in a positive sense!

I liked the way he gave some emotion, not too much, just enough to taunt you and make you want to get closer to the water… and see what this ocean was all about. His voice is warm and engaging for sure.

I liked the gothic ambiance at the beginning of the book, and how it got little by little more creepy. By chapter 3, I was really wondering what was going on, if we were just in the stuff of memories and drams, or way beyond into some strange weird spheres…

In fact, I liked how I constantly found myself wondering if I was in the real world or in a fantastic one, or always at the border in between. This is a novel about childhood, memories, growth, friendship, dreams, and mortality. And of course, I liked the last page with the two moons!! Murakami’s lovers will know what I am talking about!

Watch a cool video of Gaiman reading this book!

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

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. [Goodreads]

 

WATCH A COOL VIDEO:
GAIMAN READING AN EXCERPT OF HIS BOOK

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is a New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books for adults and children, including the novels Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and Make Good Art, the text of a commencement speech he delivered at Philadelphia’s… [Read more on Harper Collins]

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK?
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK BY GAIMAN?

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

 

Advertisement

5 thoughts on “Book review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

  1. Pingback: 2013 Audio book challenge | Words And Peace

  2. Pingback: Nonfiction November 2019: Book Pairings | Words And Peace

What do you think? Share your thoughts, and I will answer you. I will also visit your own blog

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.