The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

handwritten first draft, I would read the day’s work to my wife, Amanda, at night in bed, and I learned more about the words I’d written when reading them aloud to her than I ever have learned about anything I’ve done. She was the book’s first reader, and her puzzlement and occasional frustration, her questions and her delight were my guides through subsequent drafts. I wrote this book for Amanda, when she was far away and I missed her very much. My life would be grayer and duller without her.
    My daughters, Holly and Maddy, and my son, Michael, were my wisest and gentlest critics of all.
    I have wonderful editors on both sides of the Atlantic: Jennifer Brehl and Jane Morpeth, and Rosemary Brosnan, who all read the book in first draft and all suggested different things I needed to change and fix and rebuild. Jane and Jennifer have also both coped extremely well with the arrival of a book that none of us was expecting, not even me.
    I would very much like to thank the committee for the Zena Sutherland Lectures, held at the Chicago Public Library: the Zena Sutherland Lecture I delivered in 2012 was, in retrospect, mostly a conversation with myself about this book while I was writing it, to try and understand what I was writing and who it was for.
    Merrilee Heifetz has been my literary agent for twenty-five years now. Her support on this book, as with everything over the last quarter of a century, was invaluable. Jon Levin, my agent for films and such, is a fine reader and does a mean Ringo Starr impression.
    The good folk of Twitter were extremely helpful when I needed to double-check how much blackjacks and fruit salad sweets cost in the 1960s. Without them I might have written my book twice as fast.
    And lastly, my thanks to the Hempstock family, who, in one form or another, have always been there when I needed them.
    Neil Gaiman,
    Isle of Skye,
    July 2012

Copyright
    Grateful acknowledgment is given to Art Spiegelman for permission to use a word balloon from his collaborative conversation with Maurice Sendak in The New Yorker , copyright © by Art Spiegelman. All rights reserved.
    This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
    THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE . Copyright © 2013 by Neil Gaiman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
    EPub Edition June 2013 ISBN: 9780062255679
    Version 06212013
    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher
    Australia
    HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
    Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
    Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
    http://www.harpercollins.com.au
    Canada
    HarperCollins Canada
    2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
    Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
    http://www.harpercollins.ca
    New Zealand
    HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
    P.O. Box 1
    Auckland, New Zealand
    http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
    United Kingdom
    HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
    77-85 Fulham Palace Road
    London, W6 8JB, UK
    http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
    United States
    HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
    10 East 53rd Street
    New York, NY 10022
    http://www.harpercollins.com