blaise's book feast

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

A dark fairy tale with a confectionery sheen, Neil Gaiman provides another one of his modern parables in which the smart and strong survive.

A grown man revisits his boyhood, lost down dusty country roads and in between crumbling bricks.  He drives his old car down a narrow track, to the farmland acres of his growing up. He falls asleep by the neighbor’s pond, and succumbs to a memory so deep and troubling that it is only accessible when he infrequently visits the pond.  And charging through his memory is Lettie Hempstock, her cloak and wild hair flying in the wind; her countenance concealing her wisdom of eons.  Lettie’s supernatural history allows her and the boy to destroy an unearthly force of pervasive wickedness that nearly killed them both.  Lettie did not survive the battle in her human form and was transmuted into the Ocean at the End of the Lane, where she will rest for eons regaining her strength, and spin the moon in its nightly orbs.

I recommend obtaining the hardcover version of this book because the deckled edges provide literary luxury.