This fantasy story set in the rolling hills of England opens at the end of its own story. We first meet the main character in the throes of dealing with the funeral of a friend.

Having returned to his childhood hometown for said funeral – he drives around the country side letting that which lie below the mind guide him to the land where the house he grew up in should be. Having not much reason to look at the new houses that replaced his own, he finds his way to an old friends house – the Hempstocks.

The main character finds this family very different from how he left them: his childhood friend gone exploring the world as the woman she grew into, the grandma of the home gone, and in her stead the mother assumed the role as the wise keeper of the home. In the hospitality of the new matriarch, the main character has some small talk and goes out to the lake on the Hempstocks’ land. Here, he slips into the day dream that is the beginning of our fantastical story.

Our hero is a young boy, reclusive and an avid reader, still shaping his own opinions and values on what’s right and wrong. He finds joy in a good book, rain on his face, or the pur of his kitten – the little things. A series of rather rattling scenarios leads him to his first meeting of the Hempstocks. Now in there company, he hears that these events may not as freak or accidental as they have seemed.

Under the wing of the Hempstocks, he finds himself traveling worlds and seeing creatures that only a child could understand on first glance. There are wonders and horrors. There are things that make things so whole that it isn’t even a question that there’s one answer to everything and it’s simple.

In this book about a child intended to be read by anyone but, Neil Gaiman takes you through the wonderful adventures of this young boy as he plays his part in the Hempstocks righting of the wrongs the boil up from underneath. It is a story that teases questions like: “what is real and fantasy?”, “who are we but our experiences and what are those but what is hardly remembered?”, “what is good/evil when you don’t even understand the world yet?”, and “how does all this change and atrophy as we convince ourselves we do understand the world?”

A fantasy book that feels more real than many contemporary fiction novels: Gaiman misses out on a wizarding school, but brings in an experience much more human.

4/5