Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781472228420

Price: £9.99

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

A special Christmas edition of the Sunday Times bestseller.

WINNER OF THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2013 BOOK OF THE YEAR

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the bestselling magical novel from Neil Gaiman, one of the most brilliant storytellers of our generation and author of the epic novel American Gods, and the much-loved Sandman series. ‘Possibly Gaiman’s most lyrical, scary and beautiful work yet. It’s a tale of childhood for grown-ups, a fantasy rooted in the darkest corners of reality’ (Independent on Sunday). If you loved the mesmerising world of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus or were drawn into J.K. Rowling’s magical universe, this book is for you.

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond this world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed – within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it.

His only defence is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac – as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark.

Reviews

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.
Mid-West Times
Gaiman's achievement is to make the fantasy world seem true
The Times
A book that reads like a half-remembered fairy tale from childhood... and slots perfectly into the canon of British magical fiction
New Statesman
The writer who comes closest to the being the Dahl of his generation... The Ocean at the End of the Lane has, like all good myths, a power that defies explanation
Sunday Express
Within a few pages you know you're reading a future classic
Stylist