Neil Gaiman, first of all, is one of my favorite authors. I don't really know why, but if I had to pick a reason I would say that it's because he writes fairy tales for adults. He writes stories that are fantastic and magical without being childish, as a matter of fact his writing is actually pretty dark at times.
This book is another one of my many library finds. I was shelving and I saw a little book peek out and I'm just a sucker for long titles like that, so I read the blurb and quietly slipped it onto my cart to check out. I do this nearly every week but this week I actually read the book I found. It's quite short, and with the weather getting more and more beautiful every day I just wanted to sit outside and read in the sunshine. There's just something about summer and the end of a hard week of final exams that made me want to stick my computer on my desk and go do something else. It's been hard for me to find books that I want to read and consequently find time to read them, but just this once the world worked out.
Now this book. This book is about a boy (man) whose name we never find out. He returns to his old childhood haunt, a pond known as an ocean, at the end of the lane where his friend Lettie Hempstock used to live. He sits at the edge of the ocean, and remembers things that he had long, long forgotten about a time of his life that doesn't seem real.
I don't really know how else to describe it, expect that there is magic and a lot of ambiguity in the characters and what their role is. Are they good? Some are very good. Are they bad? Some are very bad. Some, however, are both, and therein lies the interest of any story if you ask me.
I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you are on a time constraint because it reads quickly and while it does require a certain degree of focus it shouldn't be overly complex. It's also only 181 pages long (including the Acknowledgements which I always enjoy reading).
Have a great week!
