the ocean at the end of the lane

I came across this book by Neil Gaiman after some searching in the world wide web.

I honestly don't fully get what the book is about. 

At the end of the book, I still can't believe for sure if the story our main character told was real, or was it really just a child's wild imagination. After all, as a child we do think there's a monster under our bed and tooth fairy exists. But looking at how he narrated it so vividly, I can't help but believing his adventure when he was 7 to be true. That's exactly how strong the power of words are. 

We look back at the narrator's past live, when he as an adult suddenly remembered his childhood life almost 40 years ago, when he still lives with his family in a big house. Our young 7 year old boy is not an ordinary boy. He finds protection and consolation in books. He lives in books, and he's frightened all the time. He sleeps with his bedroom door half opened, to let little light comes in. He doesn't like to play around, he prefers being in his bedroom and read some books. His perfectly safe life suddenly come to an end when a man who had been living in his house ran away with his family's car and was found dead in their white Mini at the end of the lane in the neighborhood. He came across Lettie, an 11 year old girl, who has been eleven for quite some time, and her family, Mrs. Ginny Hempstock and old Mrs Hempstock, and found that there are more to this world than what he normally sees. His nightmares start from then on. A new baby sitter, Ursulla came, and Ursulla isn't human, at least from the boy's perspective. Ursulla's face is of a beautiful lady, but only the narrator can see Ursulla's real face, a hideous "thing" with a face like ragged rotting cloth and limbs like broken mainsails. Ursulla seduced his dad, Ursulla is a flea he wants to get rid of. 

A lot of things happened after that. the narrator must face number of frightening situations he couldn't control. Feeling helpless and find protection in the powerful Hempstocks family. When the narrator came back to his old neighborhood 40 years later, he still found Lettie's house, with old Mrs. Hempstock still living there. Lettie hasn't come back yet since the incident that happened with the narrator in the past, but her pond is still there. Our 7-year-old narrator remembered how Lettie called her pond an ocean, and looking at it now, it's still a normal pond, not an ocean, but it doesn't matter anymore. As a little kid, we believe in everything, and all we know that it really is an ocean. 

"There are no 2 people who can remember the exact same thing", granny Hempstock said. The writer found some details he remembered from his childhood to be different from what granny told him. And he admitted that his memory didn't always serve him right, that it's still fuzzy sometimes, and he couldn't fully believe what he remembered as well. 

This book highlights the defenselessness of children, who often times were faced with reality the adults live in, and is forced to act the way adults want. But even in the worst situation, children can live in their own fantasy and understand the world somehow better than adults. And like how the narrator observes of the adults in his life, "people kept pulling their faces off to reveal new faces beneath."

Fantasy and adventure are never really the genres I prefer when picking up a book. But after reading this one, I think I'm ready to read more fantasy. It's quite fun.