I'd read a quote from a woman who said that she'd told her husband if she'd started weeping for seemingly no reason to not worry, it was because of this book. And I didn't totally understand, to come to that place myself, until the Epilogue, when I found myself reading through my tears. 
 This is a beautiful tale of childhood and the life that comes after, with the requisite (for a Gaiman tale) mix of mythology and the magical realism. Gorgeous.