The Ocean at the End of the Lane

There were a lot of books this could have been and I think my opinion of it suffered from having heard so much about it and wanting it to have been those other books. I wanted this to be a book about the unreliable memory of childhood and how age gives a mundane tint and banal explanations for the remembered magic, both awesome and awful. I wanted this to be a book about the adult that we become and how that holds up to the children that we were and the continuous source of identity.

Instead, it's a modern fairy tale. I love modern fairy tales and this is a great one, but I can't forgive it for not being the book I wanted it to be.