Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication Date: June 18th, 2013
Genre(s): Fantasy, Adult
Pages: 181 pages

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 Band.

Well, when I was at the bookstore I kind of confused whether to go with The Graveyard Book or this one. I really wanted to read a Neil Gaiman book (I don't know why) at the time. So, I picked this one up because this one is new released and I remembered that one of my favorite booktuber Ariel Bisset loved this book. So, I gave this one a chance.

When I first picked this book, I don't really know what this book is about, except for the lane (that is obvious, you can tell by the cover). Later, I realized the back cover is a photograph of Neil Gaiman himself at age 7 and it have a deckle edges which is awesome (I never had a deckle edges book before). I read this book for 2 days, because it is a small book with less than 200 pages, and quite confused because I can't tell which one is reality (in the story) which one is not.

This book is about our man (nameless man) who back to his childhood home at somewhere near the lane (I don't really remember where), and he was remembering his childhood at the lane where the fable began. The first thought that came to me was, whoa, this man has a remarkable memory with his experience at age 7. I'm on my early twenties and I already forget what happened when I was 7. So, it supposed we have a man as a narrator who tell us his experience at age 7. But sometimes I forgot about this man and think that the narrator is a boy age 7.

Other than the confusing part that I mentioned, this book was great. I gave it 5 out of 5 stars. If you want to get away from dystopian and contemporary YA novels for a while, I recommend this book. I hope you will enjoy reading this book as much as I did.

Happy reading! :)

-Nikita