Ocean At The End Of The Lane

A powerful story that deals with themes of childhood, innocence, and growing up. What's particularly powerful is Gaiman's ability to harness feelings that most of us, as children, have experienced at one time.Ocean At The End of The Lane is an adult fairy tale, short but oh so sweet. It brings to mind those days lived a child, recapturing that childhood wonder and imagination that's lost with adolescence. But this is through and through an adult tale, not a child's one with stark serious themes beneath the childlike veneer used to frame the story surface.It's a story about a young boy who discovers a magical world behind the facade of the lovely English countryside he occupies, a world full of amazing sights, faeries, vivid adventures, and, as our child protagonist finds out, deadly dangers too. Gaiman vividly tells a story where terrible things can and do happen to the very young and the very innocent -- qualities that do not shield from the harsh realities of life.A clever book that juggles the supernatural and the natural, showing a supernatural terror impinging on the natural order of the boy's existence, overturning his former idyllic and carefree bucolic life. But beyond the supernatural threat to the boy's childhood innocence is the stark theme of innocence lost, of families being destroyed, and leaving that tricky space of innocent childhood to find the wider world waiting with all its harsh realities.Basically, it's a bloody good tale that scares as much as it entertains with deep themes beneath. A brilliant stand alone and one of the best books of 2013.