Bizarre little book

I seem to be on a Neil Gaiman, bizarre book trend.  I just finished Fortunately, the Milk, a tale that begins innocuously enough, with a morning trip to the store for milk.  Take a look at the cover, and you can see that it goes seriously off-track

Our intrepid hero manages to save the milk through some fantastic events, as related to his children, demanding to know what took so long.  It begins with alien abduction.  Fortunately, he, and the milk, escape, and while plummeting to certain death lands in the sea, only to be captured by pirates.  He (and the milk) talks his way off the pirate ship, where he is rescued by a time-traveling stegosaurus, flying in a "floaty-ball-person-carrier."  His fantastic tale is met with scepticism by his kids as the tale grows wilder.  There are piranhas, volcanoes, pink ponies, and, fortunately, the milk.  The illustrations of Skottie Young only add to the joy of the journey.  It's a wild ride!

It ended too soon

I waited an eternity to read the critically-acclaimed The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman and found it worth the wait.  Unfortunately, it ended all too soon, more of a novella, really.  Gaiman has such a way with words.  He paints beautifully nuanced pictures, and yet still tells a wopping good yarn.  It's hard to find both...beautiful writing sometimes gets bogged in the prose.  

This is the story of a grown man returning to his childhood home and the memories of his seventh year.    The main character was an outcast who spends his seventh birthday party with just his mom because no one shows.  As I started the book I initially wondered if this might be OK for a younger reader....however, it quickly turns very dark and very mature.  A suicide leads the lonely boy to make friends with an amazing family of women who happen to have an ocean at the end of their lane.  No matter that it looks like a duck pond, there is very old magic at work.  Something very scary escapes, and thus begins a nightmare for our young hero, complete with monsters that look human, and some that don't, old magic, and parents that betray children. 

My only complaint is that it all ended much too soon.....