This is really a 4.5 star book. For quality narrative and prose: 5. For how much I actually enjoyed/understood the book: 4.

I love listening to Neil Gaiman read his books, so I got this audiobook from the library. It had everything I've come to love about Gaiman's writing style: creepy moments treated as somewhat ordinary, quotable life lessons, and a world I can't imagine how he imagined.

Spoilers possibly.

Among all of that, however, I just didn't get this book. My friend Claudia Swisher wrote a great review where she discussed that the plot didn't bother her with this novel because it was everything else that made it great. For me though, the plot did matter. I felt that we never got any resolution between the main character and his father. I felt that I never really understood the Hempstocks, although I know with them I probably wasn't supposed to. I think what is continuing to just itch at my mind is the scene with Lettie and the boy in the fairy ring where Lettie makes him wait and ignore the monsters, then brings him the ocean in the tub. They get in and he sees Lettie and knows everything, and then they get out and go to the Hempstock's farm. What was the point? Why did he have to wait in the fairy ring? Why couldn't they have just gone straight to the farm? The ocean didn't take out the hole in his heart, so why did she bring it to him, and why was it so important that old Mrs. Hempstock had to help her get it in the tub? I just didn't get it.

After reading quite a few other reviews about how the theme is really about childhood and the way we remember things, I do think it's possible that I'm just not old enough to appreciate this book yet, but I don't know. That one scene just keeps bothering me.

I will say that I have moments where I get frustrated that I can't remember more about my own childhood. It makes me sad for the boy/man that he comes to visit Lettie so she can check on him and he can remember everything, then he leaves again and forgets. I wonder if that happens to any of us.