Having read Neil Gaiman's Coraline as my first dip in the Gaiman pond, I moved on to The Ocean at the End of the Lane, 2013's Book of the Year of the British National Book Awards. I didn't really know much about this book before I read it. I had heard people rave about it, but that mostly seemed to be based on "oooh, a new book by Neil Gaiman!" and not any actual information about the book or the plot. So I went in blind. And now that I've read it, I still feel a little like I'm stumbling around in the dark. 

The story is told by an adult man who is never identified by name. He is back in the town where he grew up, at the funeral of a friend or family member who is also never identified. Without realizing where he is going, he drives until he finds himself on the road of his childhood home, and he decides to take the road to the end of lane, to the farm where he knew Lettie Hempstock. 

Lettie was a few year older than he had been, and she lived on the farm with her mother and grandmother. The narrator, a bookish boy with a sister, lived with his parents in a very happy home. But when they started having money troubles, the narrator had to move out of his bedroom so that they could take in a boarder. The boarder, an opal miner from South America, ends up gambling all of his money away, as well as the money of friends he had been entrusted with, and takes his own life. This dark deed opens a wormhole, allowing pests from another dimension into his world. 

What happens next is a fight between good and evil, between attention and carelessness, between owning your mistakes and running from them. The otherworldly conflict creates real-life issues for the narrator and his family, and it takes the strength and thousands of years' worth of wisdom that is embodied by the Hempstock women. 

Part fairy tale, part morality play, part plain old creepy story, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a mind-bending story of the secrets we forget, the feelings we remember, the sacrifice of friendship, and the meaning of childhood. 

This is not a particularly long book, but it sticks with you for awhile. I understand the story I read, but I feel like there is a story beneath it that I'm still trying to process. It will be awhile before I'm over this one. Where Dark Matter scrambled my brain, this one scrambled my soul. I think I'm starting to understand why people talk about Neil Gaiman they way they do.