Graphic novelist Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, a National Book Award winner in the U.K., beat out other award-winners in a public vote by what BBC News calls a “considerable margin” to be named Book of the Year.”I’ve never written a book before that was so close to my own heart – a story about memory and magic and the fear and danger of being a child,” said Gaiman. “I wasn’t sure that anyone else would like it. I’m amazed and thrilled that so many other people have read it, loved it, and made their friends read it too. Winning a National Book Award was thrilling; discovering that the public have made The Ocean at the End of the Lane their Book of the Year is somewhere out beyond wonderful. Thank you to everyone who voted.”Gaiman’s novel had already won a corollary award for audiobooks. He’s also had an actual street in Portsmouth named after the novel.Other shortlisted titles included Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, David Walliams’ Demon Dentist and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which is currently being adapted into a film by director David Fincher, whose animated comics adaptation The Goon is also in development right now. The first official image of Gone Girl star Ben Affleck in the role was released on Friday.Online voting for the title, the only book award chosen by readers, closed on December 19. Last year’s winner was E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, currently being adapted to film by director Sam Taylor-Johnson, whose husband is actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
