"Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences."
Embued with a comforting fairy tale quality, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" is a meditation on melancholy, childhood, and the exertion of control over one's life.
"I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? And what was watching?"
Neil Gaiman has created a magical, mystical world in this heavily autobiographical work that makes for a frantically fast read. The criticism here is that it felt like the tale ended just as there was a sense of so much more to tell.
The author mentioned that this one started as a short story that grew into a novel, and as it leaves you wishing for more exploration, one wonders if perhaps it may have been better served as that short story after all.
"'Why do you think she's scared of anything? She's a grown-up, isn't she? Grown-ups and monsters aren't scared of things.'"
"'Oh, monsters are scared,' said Lettie. 'That's why they're monsters.'"
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