O is for The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Hardcover, 181 pages

Published June 18th 2013 by William Morrow Books

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

Cover thoughts...

Dani - This cover is dark & mysterious and that’s just the way I like them! The submerged girl and the amazing title of the book pulls it all together with perfection.

Jax - Wow! This cover's beautiful, yet haunting. It's like being in a dream, and not sure if it's going to turn into a nightmare or be something magical.

To view other bloggers participating in the challenge, and to read about A to Z, please go HERE.