Chapter One Hundred Eleven: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is fantasy author Neil Gaiman's most recent novel (or one of them--I had trouble in my brief search finding a chronological and up-to-date list of his publications).  I've been meaning to read it since it was published, and I finally had the time for it, and now I'm very glad I did.  It is not as heavy as, say American Gods felt to me at times, despite the fact that its plot is largely driven by a creepy and mysterious event buried deep in the narrator's past.  Gaiman does a great job in The Ocean at the End of the Lane at bringing in enough elements of fantasy to satisfy at least my appetite for the fantastical without causing any confusion about what he's describing.  (Again, this is unlike American Gods or Anansi Boys, which I enjoyed but in which I felt I was missing something due to my very shallow knowledge of mythology and folk tale characters.)  Still, if you don't like fantasy this probably isn't the book for you, grounded as it is in realistic-feeling descriptions of a boy's life in 1960s rural England.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fairly fast-paced novel whose action is fairly quick to start, and it had no problem gaining and holding my interest, so if you want a fun little fantasy read, I'd heartily suggest it.