The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

By Neil Gaiman

I first read this when a friend lent it to me in May-June 2021.

I saw Neil Gaiman on the cover and I’d seen it a few times in bookshops so I asked if I could borrow it, and started reading.

Utterly brilliant book, and one of the rare ones I’ve found which deal with childhood, and deal with it well.

That sense of hugeness - the perfectly functional young mind gazing out at a world it almost understands but which remains frustratingly opaque, the lack of power, the subjugation to the wishes of adults.

The family in the book, the Hempstocks, also turn up in the Graveyard Book, and in some of the Sandman series. I love the idea of them, and honestly her death near the end of the book was really devastating

Later that term, I saw SJ had also borrowed it! I wonder how she found it.