#the girl had a boyfriend made of sand that she hid in a suitcase under her bed and she had to water him regularly and at some point

[hedgehog-moss]

The Neverending Story is so good! I've never actually come across anyone else who had read it, and I also agree with your analogy!

I loved this book so much as a kid! It had exactly the kind of surreal, "no rhyme or reason” worldbuilding that delighted me. Summarising it feels like attempting to describe absurdist poetry. The good part starts with the giant egg that vomits a ladder made of words, right? And each rung is a sentence and as you climb up you realise the Word Ladder is telling you to go away. You ignore it and get inside the egg and it contains the book (the one you’re reading). Then

you burst forth from the egg with the seed of the Night Forest which turns into a multicoloured desert during the day, with the Many-Coloured Death gallopping across (it’s a lion)

the lion carries you to his tomb, and dies. You go through a house with too many doors, including one that has to be unbuttoned.

beyond that door you get to a city where every house is a ship on a lake of tears (because the founders of the city were so ugly they wept all day long)

you send a friend to fight a kangaroo dragon with baby hands who lives in a castle surrounded by moats of nitric acid. You made this up so your friend could feel like a hero.

The dragon has an old man’s head and an old woman’s head where his eyes should be.

you get an old mule and meet the ugly beings who sob all day. They hate themselves and think they don’t deserve to exist and you basically agree so you turn them into butterflies. Inevitably they make hideous butterflies, with receding hairlines (yes) and clown faces.

you are joined by odd creatures (an army of ants with helmets, walking puddles, birds with flute beaks, etc) as you cross a forest of giant carnivorous orchids. The evil orchid forest is inhabited by a witch who lives in a castle shaped like a hand with eyes. She wears purple silk and mind-controls hollow people. She brainwashes you for a few months, she’s amazing

you get rid of your old mule because the witch said it’s ugly. Your ugly mule bursts into sobs. You tell her that at least she’s got a cool story for the grandkids and she’s like “Mules are sterile, idiot” so you promise her that a virile swan-stallion will impregnate her with hybrid babies and she’s all cheered up (whatever you say comes true, unfortunately)

You meet wise monks with bird heads. You

become Emperor

go insane

try to murder your best friend.

You end up in a gloomy city and a monkey tells you it is inhabited by former Emperors and Empresses who have gone insane. There are hundreds of them, dressed in crazy ways and busy doing crazy things (one is shaving a mirror, another pasting postage stamps on soap bubbles). The monkey uses them for his entertainment. Everything about this is creepy

the monkey sends you to the Sea of Mist, which can be crossed with ships propelled by thoughts. The mist sailors sing calm songs and are very nice so you find them boring (you’re a terrible person)

you reach an adorable pumpkin cottage! Inhabited by a woman who wears a dress made of fruit. As she happily waters herself with a watering can, you realise the fruit isn’t her clothing but is actually growing out of her body like other people grow hair. You feel a bit weird about having eaten so much of her fruit.

she’s like hey it’s cool, when you were a baby you drank milk that your mother made with her body and that’s exactly the same thing. She wants to keep you as her baby and she puts you to sleep in a crib. You stay with her for weeks and whenever something reminds you that you should leave, you suddenly get a strange craving for fruit.

you manage to leave and you meet a blind miner who extracts people’s dreams. You go down the mine shaft to grab a dream but it is destroyed by the ugly butterfly-clowns when they try to kidnap you because they love you.

you find your friend Atreyu who forgives you for the murder attempt, you drink rainbow water and you get to go home, but more importantly, what happened to the witch? Unfortunately she was trampled to death by the hooves of giant metallic horses. She mind-controlled the riders so it’s kind of implied she chose to die? Without anyone to mind-control them, the monstrous horses and their hollow riders remain motionless for all eternity, slowly sinking into the ground and eventually forming a landscape of eerie ruins that future generations will believe to be haunted.