A powerful examination of both the ways people fail to live up to their uncompromisable ideals and fantasies, but also how attempting to live up to those ideals at all still has merit and carries weight. The protagonist, the whisky priest, understands that latter point better than most in the novel, and finds it easier…

A lot of Gaiman’s pet themes are on display in “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” – the ethereality of memory, the interplay between childhood and adulthood, the use of fantasy and storytelling as a coping mechanism, belief and consciousness as ontological underpinnings of reality – but there’s a kind of unique feeling…