The Ocean at the End of the Lane - by Neil Gaiman Paperback

About the Book

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

Book Synopsis

#1 New York Times Bestseller

UK National Book Awards Book of the Year

"Fantasy of the very best."--Wall Street Journal

A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, 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.

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 where she once lived, 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.

"[Gaiman's] mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown."
--New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover

UK National Book Awards 2013 "Book of the Year"

"Fantasy of the very best." Wall Street Journal

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 where she once lived, 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.

A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, 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.

"[Gaiman's] mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown." New York Times Book Review

Review Quotes

"This is fantasy of the very best." - Wall Street Journal
"[W]ry and freaky and finally sad. . . . This is how Gaiman works his charms. . . . He crafts his stories with one eye on the old world, on Irish folktales and Robin Hood and Camelot, and the other on particle physics and dark matter." - Chicago Tribune on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"Gaiman has crafted an achingly beautiful memoir of an imagination and a spellbinding story that sets three women at the center of everything. . . .[I]t's a meditation on memory and mortality, a creative reflection on how the defining moments of childhood can inhabit the worlds we imagine." - Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI)
"His mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown." - New York Times Book Review
"Gaiman is a master of fear, and he understands the nature of fairytales." - A. S. Byatt, The Guardian (UK)
"Remarkable . . . wrenchingly, gorgeously elegiac. . . . [I]n The Ocean at the End of the Lane, [Gaiman] summons up childhood magic and adventure while acknowledging their irrevocable loss, and he stitches the elegiac contradictions together so tightly that you won't see the seams." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"When I finally closed the last page of this slim volume it was with the realization that I'd just finished one of those uncommon perfect books that come along all too rarely in a reader's life." - Charles DeLint, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"Remarkable . . . wrenchingly, gorgeously elegiac. . . . [I]n The Ocean at the End of the Lane, [Gaiman] summons up childhood magic and adventure while acknowledging their irrevocable loss, and he stitches the elegiac contradictions together so tightly that you won't see the seams." - Star Tribune (Minneapolis) on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"[A] compelling tale for all ages . . . entirely absorbing and wholly moving." - New York Daily News on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"[A] story concerning the bewildering gulf between the innocent and the authoritative, the powerless and the powerful, the child and the adult. . . . Ocean is a novel to approach without caution; the author is clearly operating at the height of his career." - The Atlantic Wire on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' is fun to read, filled with his trademarked blend of sinister whimsy. Gaiman's writing is like dangerous candy--you're certain there's ground glass somewhere, but it just tastes so good!" - Bookish (Houston Chronicle book blog)
"The impotence of childhood is often the first thing sentimental adults forget about it; Gaiman is able to resurrect, with brutal immediacy, the abject misery of being unable to control one's own life." - Laura Miller, Salon
"Ocean has that nearly invisible prose that keeps the focus firmly on the storytelling, and not on the writing. . . . This simple exterior hides something much more interesting; in the same way that what looks like a pond can really be an ocean." - io9
"Poignant and heartbreaking, eloquent and frightening, impeccably rendered, it's a fable that reminds us how our lives are shaped by childhood experiences, what we gain from them and the price we pay." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"His prose is simple but poetic, his world strange but utterly believable--if he was South American we would call this magic realism rather than fantasy." - The Times (London) on THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE
"Mr. Gaiman labels [The Ocean at the End of the Lane] 'for all ages, ' which is exactly right. It has grief, fear and regret, as well as love and awe-adult emotions, but children feel them too. The best fantasy keeps its feet firmly planted in the real world while offering a vision of what lies beyond, and like all Mr. Gaiman's work, this is fantasy of the very best." - Wall Street Journal on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"Gaiman has crafted an achingly beautiful memoir of an imagination and a spellbinding story that sets three women at the center of everything. . . .It's a meditation on memory and mortality, a creative reflection on how the defining moments of childhood can inhabit the worlds we imagine." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"[W]orthy of a sleepless night . . . a fairy tale for adults that explores both innocence lost and the enthusiasm for seeing what's past one's proverbial fence . . . Gaiman is a master of creating worlds just a step to the left of our own." - USA Today on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"Gaiman lets his narrator share his memories with curious incredulousness and incredible calm. That allows the story to wash over readers, to overwhelm us slowly and deliciously. We're invited into the mist too, and it's a squirmy thing." - Savannah Morning News on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"[Gaiman] paints a child's life with wrenching sympathy and precision, and delivers and engrossing myth for our age. The Ocean at the end of the Lane, full of discovery and bonding, sacrifice and heroism, will gratify Gaiman fans and new readers alike." - Columbus Dispatch on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"Reading Gaiman's new novel, his first for adults since 2005's The Anansi Boys, is like listening to that rare friend whose dreams you actually want to hear about at breakfast.[...] Gaiman's at his fantasy-master best here - the struggle between a boy and a shape shifter with 'rotting-cloth eyes' moves at a speedy, chilling clip. What distinguishes the book, though, is its evocation of the powerlessness and wonder of childhood, a time when magic seems as likely as any other answer and good stories help us through." - People on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"This slim novel, gorgeously written, keeps its talons in you long after you've finished." - New York Post on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"In Gaiman's latest romp through otherworldly adventure, a young boy discovers a neighboring family's supernatural secret. Soon his innocence is tested by ancient, magical forces, and he learns the power of true friendship. The result is a captivating read, equal parts sweet, sad, and spooky." - Parade on The Ocean at the End of the Lane
"A terrifying shift in the nature of things lies at the heart of Neil Gaimain's rich new novel." - The Guardian on The Ocean at the End of the Lane