Finished: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Gaiman) Thanks for the recommendation, Caroline! A very good story, hard to put down, and I want to know if the little boy ever sees Lettie again?? I just realized that his name is never said or known, but I feel like I know him well. Anyway, a very good story, but very short...leaving me wanting more. The boy is only 7 years old, but a very bookish boy, and though his mother sets a huge table for his birthday party, nobody comes. :-( He has no friends, really. He lives with his mother, father and sister. When things get tight money-wise, he's got to give up his bedroom so they can take in renters, the first of which is a scruffy old opal miner who accidentally runs over and kills the boy's brand new kitten, Fluffy. :-( :-( Not long after, the old renter takes their family car down a country lane and kills himself because he's spent all the money people gave him to invest in America. The boy has gone along with his dad to get their car, and they are shocked to see the dead body. An eleven year old girl, Lettie Hempstock, whose land they are on, offers for the boy to come back to her house for a bit while the police do their thing. Here the boy finds a new, protective friend, and meets her mother and grandmother. She learns that Lettie considers the pond out back on their farm to be an ocean. He also soon learns that there is more to the Hempstock women than he could ever have imagined. They never exactly say what they are, but not witches. They are ageless, though, and have special powers. When Lettie and the boy come across an evil, huge, bat like "flea", a being that wants to escape into our world and thrive, Lettie tells the boy not to let go of her hand as she starts reciting old language to contain it and put it away. However, the flea throws some kind of fireball at the boy and he instinctively reaches out to catch it. At that moment, he feels a sharp pain in his heel, and unbeknownst to Lettie, who thinks she's contained the flea, the flea has entered the boy! The next day the boy and his sister have a beautiful but sinister new nanny, Ursula, who wreaks havoc on their family. Having found the new hole in his foot, and pulled part of a slimy worm from it, the boy just knows that this is the evil being. No one would believe him if he said anything though. The flea takes control of his father when the boy tries to leave the yard and makes the father get angry and nearly drown the boy in the bathtub! (The mother suddenly has a new night shift job.) The flea has threatened to lock the boy in the attic if he tries to leave the property again. The next night, the boy hears his father with the nanny and though he doesn't know exactly what they're doing, he figures they'll be preoccupied for awhile. He climbs out his window and makes his way to Lettie's....but not before Ursula comes flying through the air after him. Lettie protects the boy and Ursula flies back to his house. Lettie, her mother and grandmother all know that they must rid the earth of the flea, but she has created a "door" inside the boy which is her portal. The grandmother pulls the portal out of the boy's foot, and Lettie and the boy set off back to his house to put the flea back in the portal. (Why the grandmother and mother don't do this, I don't know...I guess they figure Lettie is capable.) Anyway, Ursula refuses to go back into the portal so Lettie must summon the awful "hunger birds" to come and literally eat Ursula away. They won't leave when they're finished though because they say there is still a little bit of Ursula's portal left...inside the boy! Lettie puts the boy in a safe faerie circle and tells him not to move no matter what. It takes her all night but she comes back with a bucketful of water from her "ocean". She has the boy step in the pail and suddenly he's immersed in a huge ocean and he knows all things! He can see how earth was created, how it will end, and everything in between. When he comes out of the ocean, he is actually exiting onto Lettie's property, and though the piece of Ursula's portal isn't removed from his heart, he is protected on her property. When he comes out of the ocean, his mind starts getting blurry and he forgets all the wonders he just knew. So, Lettie, her mother and grandmother know there is a battle to come with the hunger birds. They don't count on them being so relentless though. Even though they can't swoop down and take the boy, they start eating everything surrounding the farm in sight, the forest, a fox, a constellation! The boy, seeing that everything in the world will be destroyed because of him, breaks free from Lettie's hold and runs to the edge of her property. Once off their land, the hunger birds swoop down on him to eat his heart. Lettie throws herself on him, though, and in that time the grandmother has come out. She's very powerful and admonishes the birds and they fearfully leave....not before they have done apparent irreparable damage to Lettie though. :-( She appears to be pretty lifeless, so her mother carries her into the "ocean" where a huge light-filled wave envelops her. They are all very sad and the grandmother tells the boy that they may see Lettie again someday, but they don't know. It will take a long time for the ocean to heal her if ever. The ladies take the boy back to his home and thank his parents for letting him come to Lettie's going away party...she's off to Australia with her father. A bit confused, the family and even the boy come to know this as the real story and forget all else that has happened. When the boy is a man with two grown children and a divorce behind him, he goes back to the area for a funeral. He makes his way to the pond and suddenly everything comes back to him! The grandmother makes her way down to sit by him and says that Lettie wanted to see how his life turned out...was her sacrifice worth it? Was he a good human being? The boy says he can't believe it took him so long to come back. The grandmother says, oh you've been here before, twice before....he just doesn't remember. They always take the memory from him. At the end, he heads back to the funeral reception and Lettie fades from his head again. Pooh, I really wanted some communication between Lettie and the boy at the end! No matter what, though, it was a really good book and makes me want to read more from Neil Gaiman! :-)