I recently read “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman. My brother sent me this book for my birthday this year because he knows how how much I love Neil Gaiman. He is a a wonderful storyteller. He shows us that even in our modern times, there can be magical worlds hidden right below the surface of our lives.

This story is about a man that returns home for a funeral. He has not been there in a long time, and as he approaches his childhood home, he is flooded with memories from childhood that he had forgotten for many years. Something very bizarre and magical happened to him when he was a child. As he had grown older, he had pushed the impossible out of his mind and had forgotten the strange occurrences.

The majority of the story is told from the point of view of the man as a child. We are thrown back thirty years and experience the magic and the point of view of a young boy. He encounters both terrible creatures and protectors of this realm. He must learn to believe in a larger world than he had ever considered and understand that a pond can also be an ocean.

My favorite thing about the book is the way that Gaiman shows the relationship between the children and the adults in the book. There is one point when the little boy has something very weird happen to him and he just assumes that is something that everyone goes through and doesn’t tell an adult about it. It is a great moment that illustrates how a child sees the world differently. He believes the adults know everything and can be trusted until he learns that neither are true.

This book was a very fun read. It was a magical fairytale. It reminded me of Coraline, but a larger, more fleshed out story. There was some adult content in it that make it not quite a children’s book, but instead it is a children’s book for adults. It was a very enjoyable read and I can’t wait to pass my copy of the book around for others to enjoy too.