The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman
★★★★★
I have been so hesitant to write this review because of the absolute deluge of reviews I’ve already seen and also because I felt like I still needed to process it. It’s been a few weeks now and I think I can put my reaction into words. It’s funny that this book is so hard to review considering it’s less than 200 pages long.
We begin with our narrator, a forty-something adult returning home for a funeral. Soon he is bombarded with long-forgotten details from his childhood. When he was seven a series of odd events happened to him. An opal miner who was a lodger in his home commits suicide. Then his path crosses with the incredible Hempstock women, particularly the 11-year-old Lettie and around the same time he gains a new nanny, Ursula Monkton.
This fantastical walk down one boy’s memory lane brings up so many thoughts about our own childhood memories. How much is fact, how much is the fiction we tell ourselves? Can we trust our memories or have they become distorted with time and our worldview as a child?
“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.”
Many of my favorite scenes in the book take place in the Hempstock women’s kitchen. It seems our young narrator is always eating. He describes the dishes in detail, mounds of shepherd’s pie, pancakes, etc. It paints such a picture of comfort and warmth and reminds me how food is such a strong trigger for memory.
I’m going to avoid sharing any major plot points, because the apprehension of not knowing what’s next is what makes the book impossible to put down. It is entirely a Gaiman novel in every sense of the word. So expect it to be a bit dark, include some fantasy elements and gorgeous writing. If you already love his work you won’t be disappointed.
I’m going to avoid sharing any major plot points, because the apprehension of not knowing what’s next is what makes the book impossible to put down. It is entirely a Gaiman novel in every sense of the word. So expect it to be a bit dark, include some fantasy elements and gorgeous writing. If you already love his work you won’t be disappointed.
BOTTOM LINE: For me it was a beautiful and strange novel. It was short, but it’s been a few weeks since I read it and I keep thinking about different aspects of the story. It raises questions and answers others. Gaiman’s writing brought all these elements together to create something I know I’ll return to again and again.
“That’s the trouble with living things. Don’t last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together…”
“I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
For anyone who is new to Gaiman’s work but would like to try more I’ll refer you to a previous post of mine. I recommend books based on his work, but you can use the list in reverse, picking your next book by him based on work by other authors.
There have already been some beautiful reviews written about the bigger issues in this deceptively simple novel, memory, female portrayal in literature, fantasy elements in coming-of-age, etc.
Here are a couple of my favorites.
A post on the strength of female characters in the book.
