A review by cranberry__sauce
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

5.0

"I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew. It would scare them." - Maurice Sendak

Neil Gaiman knows about childhood—he knows that feeling of longing for something you used to have, and may never have again. He knows how childhood memories can fade away, becoming nebulous over time; how our early years are wondrous when we look back, but really not so great when they happened.

This book is absolutely incredible. Gaiman captures feelings so difficult to put into words and he does so magnificently.

Here are just a few of my favorite quotes:

"I wonder how I looked to her, in that place, and knew that even in a place that was nothing but knowledge that was the one thing I could not know. That if I looked inward I would see only infinite mirrors, staring into myself for eternity."

"The dream was haunting me: standing beside me, present and yet invisible, like the back of my head, simultaneously there and not there...I tried to pull the dream that had upset me so to the front of my mind, but it would not come. There had been betrayal in it, I knew, and loss, and time."

"I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy."