It would scare them." Sendak's quote is an apt warning. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. Neil Gaiman's "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" (2013) begins with a quote by Maurice Sendak, "I remember my own childhood vividly. A stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark. And Lettie - magical, comforting, wise beyond her years - promised to protect him, no matter what.Ī 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. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet sitting by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean), the unremembered past comes flooding back. 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. Sussex, England: A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Audie Award Finalist, Narration by the Author or Authors, 2014
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