I have just finished reading this book. I feel as if Neil Gaiman has offered us his autobiography. Not his memoirs, with the details that satisfy and feed a hunger for gossip and false intimacy, like junk food for the soul. An autobiography: the story of who he is. Like most true stories, it becomes the story of the reader’s life as well. It is a very tender feeling: like being presented with an honor, an invitation, a challenge, a gift.
ETA that the Rev. Sean Parker Dennison has written a very moving post about this book and his own “beautiful lie.” Another gift from another fine writer.
Sermons in Stones 
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August 16, 2013 at 3:07 pm
Beth Williamson
When I taught in Port Isabel, Texas, I spent my final year there living on South Padre Island where the Gulf of Mexico was out the front door to the
left over the dunes. I even considered buying a lot. They were $10 down and $10 a month in those days. Then in the fall of 1967 we had hurricane Beulah. The gulf washed over the island in several places, The storm hit just after Labor Day. Damage was severe enough that no tourists were allowed on the island until after Labor Day. Some of my students and colleagues lost their homes and some of the students lived on the family shrimp boat until roofs were replaced. It cured me of the desire to own any part of the island. But I can still hear the waves in my head when I look out the window toward the rising sun, even though I now live 100 miles inland from the coast.
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August 21, 2013 at 12:32 pm
timbartik
I agree that this is a wonderful book. There are so many wonderful quotes in it. The one I remember off the top of my head is the comment that inside of people, there are no grown-ups in the world.
A good recent quasi-fantasy with a similar autobiographical feel is Jo Walton’s book , “Among Others”, which won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012. It is a fantasy version of her adolescence. It would be of most appeal to someone who, like Jo Walton, found much meaning in books during their growing-up.
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