It was only a duck pond, out at the back of the farm. It wasn't very big.
From Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Review from Kirkus Review:
An unnamed protagonist and narrator returns to his Sussex roots to attend a funeral. Although his boyhood dwelling no longer stands, at the end of the road lies the Hempstock farm, to which he’s drawn without knowing why. Memories begin to flow. The Hempstocks were an odd family, with 11-year-old Lettie’s claim that their duck pond was an ocean, her mother’s miraculous cooking and her grandmother’s reminiscences of the Big Bang; all three seemed much older than their apparent ages. Forty years ago, the family lodger, a South African opal miner, gambled his fortune away, then committed suicide in the Hempstock farmyard. Something dark, deadly and far distant heard his dying lament and swooped closer. As the past becomes the present, Lettie takes the boy’s hand and confidently sets off through unearthly landscapes to deal with the menace; but he’s only 7 years old, and he makes a mistake. Instead of banishing the predator, he brings it back into the familiar world.
Why this book is here:
For one thing, it's by Neil Gaiman. But more than that because it draws the boundries of fantasy and reality together, then takes them and twists them into a braid of wonder. There are truths here that are always alive just outside of the boundaries of our everyday lives. Gaiman brings them into the open, and shakes them out like well-washed laundry so we can take a quick look before they disappear again.
From Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Review from Kirkus Review:
An unnamed protagonist and narrator returns to his Sussex roots to attend a funeral. Although his boyhood dwelling no longer stands, at the end of the road lies the Hempstock farm, to which he’s drawn without knowing why. Memories begin to flow. The Hempstocks were an odd family, with 11-year-old Lettie’s claim that their duck pond was an ocean, her mother’s miraculous cooking and her grandmother’s reminiscences of the Big Bang; all three seemed much older than their apparent ages. Forty years ago, the family lodger, a South African opal miner, gambled his fortune away, then committed suicide in the Hempstock farmyard. Something dark, deadly and far distant heard his dying lament and swooped closer. As the past becomes the present, Lettie takes the boy’s hand and confidently sets off through unearthly landscapes to deal with the menace; but he’s only 7 years old, and he makes a mistake. Instead of banishing the predator, he brings it back into the familiar world.
Why this book is here:
For one thing, it's by Neil Gaiman. But more than that because it draws the boundries of fantasy and reality together, then takes them and twists them into a braid of wonder. There are truths here that are always alive just outside of the boundaries of our everyday lives. Gaiman brings them into the open, and shakes them out like well-washed laundry so we can take a quick look before they disappear again.