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

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Publisher: William Morrow Books
Publication Date: 06-18-2013
Genre: Fantasy
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Sussex, England. 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, the unremembered past come flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie - magical, comforting, wise beyond her years - promised to protect  him, no matter what. {Goodreads}

I've been working on putting this review together for the better part of a month. Possibly because the book is just that good and anything I saw would be inadequate. It's possible I could just put NEIL GAIMAN and be done. However, I feel I should at least make some effort at telling you why it's awesome. So today's post will be a bullet review. I can get my thoughts out without the added pressure of complete paragraphs.

• Definitely a modern fairy tale a la the Brothers Grimm. Fantastical and out there and not at all sunshine and rainbows. With no guarantee that everything will turn out okay in the end. 
• Excellent suspense - I was actually holding my breath at one point. I found it was more intense than The Graveyard Book and absolutely aimed at an older crowd. 
• Neil Gaiman write the most beautiful prose and this as some of the best I've read. 
• I didn't realize this until the end but the main character telling the story is never named, nor are any of his family members. They aren't given much physical description, either. I found this lets you become more involved in other details and even with the characters, because they could truly be anyone existing in any time. 
• The story-line is one that leaves you marveling at the author's creativity. Gaiman states that this is a story that has been brewing in his mind for years, which I find amazing. It's unique in its concepts and plays with how we remember events and the role it plays in our future. The act of remembering can be just as powerful, if not more so, than the experience itself, but do we always need to hang on to them all? Are we still changed by it in the end, regardless?