Genres: Fiction
It’s a dark world and there are dark stories to be told. Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is one of them. It is a slim book narrated by an unnamed English man in his forties, who returns to his childhood home located in the English countryside of Sussex. “Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet,” writes Neil Gaiman.
Indeed it is true, those memories will recall in our mind later like fresh berry juices. But they just need a right moment to make an appearance. The unnamed narrator on returning to his childhood home is drawn to familiar places that he hasn’t seen in a long time and which provoke those buried memories to make an appearance.
He long ago knew a girl named Lettie Hempstock. When he rambles through her farm and follows the trail to the duck pond, it seems he might as well be traveling through time. Memories are waiting all around, and when he tosses a hazelnut into the water, the ripples carry across his mind as he remembers everything.
This unnamed pariah and nerd who has found solace in stories and books and considered them “safer than other people,” while immersed all his childhood in to them. The memory starts when his Mom and Dad take in a succession of lodgers, displacing the boy from his bedroom. When the latest lodger kills himself in the family’s car, something happens. Some kind of magic is unleashed at that time. And a monster is known to him who dupes narrator’s family and he is the only one who is able recognise this monster. He his then helped by Hempstocks and their eleven year old Lettie on a farm which is at the end of the lane, near the pond whom both Lettie and our unnamed narrator call the ocean.
This book did not work for me that well. One of the reasons is that the narrative voice looses its grip in between of the story and becomes dull. There is to much magic for me to absorb personally and I think the way the book starts it could have been different story altogether. The ending did not tempt me either.
It is terrifying though, as Gaiman does raise some questions to think over in this slim volume. He questions the happiness of oneself in this world.
2 out of 5
I’m very curious and always drawn to Bail on but I don’t always end up with the love everyone else comes awash with. I’m sorry it didn’t work for you
Don’t be sorry, books are like that. Some are meaningful to some and some are not. Rest of them (books) are still waiting to be read.
I enjoyed this book a lot, but I completely understand your review. I might have read this book at the right time in my life where I was asking the same questions Gaiman posed in the book.
Thanks.
I’m a big fan of Gaiman, I’ve read the vast majority of his books & had the ocean at the end of the lane preordered & I couldn’t wait to read it… But it was a disappointment. After all the build up I couldn’t enjoy the story and it was boring, something I have never described his work as before!
I haven’t read much of his work, only Coraline and this one. Coraline was better in the sense of fantasy, this one was moving in a good direction but the magic thing spoiled it for me.
Neverwhere & stardust are both brilliant reads. I would definitely recommend.
I’ll give them a try, thanks for the recommendation.
[…] BOOK REVIEW: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman […]
Loved this book. Gaiman is a master. I wrote a post on the symbolism in this book, if you are interested.
https://stuffjeffreads.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/symbolism-in-the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane-by-neil-gaiman/
Cheers!
Thanks for the link Jeff.
You’re very welcome! We clearly share good taste in literature. Cheers!
We do Jeff, certainly, we do!