http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15783514-the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane" >
The">http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15783514-the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane">The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by
Neil">http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1221698.Neil_Gaiman">Neil Gaiman
My rating:
4">http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/646190391">4 of 5 stars
You don't have to read this. Neil told me that I didn't have to read the Acknowledgements; that the story was over and that it was mostly names and thank you's. He told me just as he told everyone else, right there at the beginning of the Acknowledgements. I didn't stop there though, because some of the names I would recognize. I knew I would. So I read on. And I suspected there would be more meaning to pull out. And I did know many of the names and I had been along (from a very great distance) on that journey of writing this book and the longer journey of his coming together with Amanda and the coming of age of his youngest daughter and all of it. And in the end I was one of those "folk of Twitter", but by then I was already choked up again by my reading of the Acknowledgements that I didn't have to do (because Neil told me I could skip it, that I could be done now, before... before I read the names and the thank you's. But I choked up just as I did pages earlier, with the... well I'll avoid telling, but its allegorical and familiar and imperfect and nobody experiences the same experience the same. (I think Neil told me that too.) I've read the acknowledgements and now I am done with The Ocean at the End of the Lane. (After I rant a little about how it made me feel, I felt I had to write about it, after midnight or not, but you didn't have to read it.)
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