Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

A man returns to his childhood home for a funeral, and finds himself walking down the lane to the old house with the duck pond in front. As a boy he made friends with Lettie, the girl who lived there with her mother and grandmother, and as he sits by the pond he recalls some long-forgotten memories: how he and Lettie encountered something terrifying in the fields around her house, how the boy accidentally brought it home with him, and how only Lettie and her family could free him and save his life.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman's first book for adults in eight years, and he does what he's best at - capturing childhood fears and making them larger than life again, even as an adult mind questions whether any of these terrifying things are real. Is the duck pond really the ocean, as Lettie says it is? Is the new housekeeper human or not? Did Lettie really move to Australia, or has the middle-aged narrator forgotten what really happened to her? Gaiman's exploration of memory and fear is a gripping walk into a past we might think we've left behind us. - Michelle (Sunset)