This is Gaimans' best book since American Gods, an unapologetically nostalgic pseudo-memoir that is as patient and restrained as that novel was ambitious and complex. 
 Following a trip to the rural English area where the middle-aged narrator spent a portion of his youth, a seemingly impossible collection of memories are reawakened, involving a young girl, her mother, and her grandmother -- an archetypal trio with a powerful resonance, as the maiden-mother-crone of the Fates and the Furies -- who live on an idyllic but unspectacular farm. The narrator suddenly recollects the fantastic and terrifying events that follow his decision to accompany the girl on a short walk to the 'ocean at the end of the lane'... an extra-dimensional no-man's-land that only the Three Women know and navigate. But something very ancient and dangerous returns with them, to play its long forgotten games with the unwary locals. 
 The maiden-mother-crone is one of Gaiman's favorite cards in the mythological deck. In the climactic final act of The Sandman, Gaiman portrayed the Erinyes, or Furies -- who hound anyone guilty of shedding familial blood -- as unstoppable agents of vengeance that fill Gods and Titans with dread, and not even Dream of the Endless can escape. 
 There are few writers with a knowledge and feel for all things mythical like Gaiman, who has an intuitive understanding of the usually baffling and contradictory rules of pagan gods and fairytale monsters. Trying to see through the eyes of our heathen ancestors His witty observations of the intrinsic silliness to be found in beliefs both ancient and modern counterbalance the moments of horror and genuine sadness. 
 The emotional resonance Gaiman slowly builds over the course of this novel is something special. As an emotional cripple with absolutely no patience for maudlin sentimentality or saccharine navel-gazing, I actually cried at the end of this book... the first time that's happened since I turned the final pages of Watership Down when I was 10 (there's just something about the English countryside, I guess). 
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