This isn't my first time reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Nor is it the first time I tried to blog about it. I remembered reading the book a few months after it was released, but I wasn't quite as confident writing book reviews then, so I scrapped the draft.
After I finished Armada, I thought about what to read next. And not wanting to start the new year with an unfinished book, I decided to focus on shorter titles. I knew I wasn't going to take an hour to finish Fortunately, the Milk, and, with a lack of short books in my TBR list, I focused on re-reads that I've been meaning to get to.
I must confess it's still not easy for me to write about The Ocean at the End of the Lane. My second reading, given the amount of time it succeeded the first, felt like a fresh story in my mind. Or that's just how it goes with any Neil Gaiman book I read and re-read. But, if I learned anything the past year in my semi-regular posts on my reading list, it's that it helps to just try writing and see where your thoughts will eventually take you. I've found myself realizing certain truths or opinions about what I've read only reveal themselves as I write.
The narrator, an unnamed middle aged man, returns home to bury his father. He finds himself exploring his childhood hometown, trying to remember details that have long since faded into vagueness because of time and distance. But as he follows his memory, he comes upon and remembers the Hempstock family. He remembers his friend, Lettie Hempstock, who has gone to live in Australia when they were young. Sitting by the pond of the Hempstock farm, however, he remembers that Lettie and her family weren't exactly normal, that the small pond was actually an ocean, and that he faced a terrible danger in his youth.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane makes for an interesting title and the cover gave the impression of serenity. You know that the former would hint at the complex world that lies beyond what the narrator could normally see, and that the latter wouldn't be the tone of the entire book. The Ocean at the End of the Lane starts off quietly, with a boy who's forced to give up his perfect bedroom so that his parents can rent it out to supplement their income. One particular tenant, an opal miner, brings him more misery than the others, though, starting off with accidentally killing the narrator's beloved kitten and ending his short stay in their home by taking their family car in order to kill himself in it. His suicide leads not only to the narrator's first meeting with Lettie, her mother and her grandmother, who are all surnamed Hempstock, it also unleashes a horror that would terrorize the narrator personally.
Neil Gaiman is known for having a tinge of (if not full-bodied) horror in his stories and doesn't shy away from making his protagonists miserable, and in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I keenly felt for the narrator as his experiences ranged from discomfort to sheer terror. I found myself feeling thankful that the book was short, because I really could only take so much of the horrors dished out by Ursula Monkton, she who inhabits a human form but is surely some kind of devil who influences and seduces with evil glee. There are moments when you truly feel empathy for the narrator, when it's not hard to feel both helpless and hopeless in his experiences.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a short book, especially if you compare it with Neil Gaiman's other novels meant for adults, but it makes the most out of its smaller number of pages. Once you get started, it's hard to put down. The Hempstocks never feel the need to hide what they do with the narrator, but their straightforwardness also means that they don't feel the need to expound on their abilities or knowledge. It's a subtler form of world building, hinting at mythologies and a different sort of higher power that still manages to intrigue. Yes, it is a shorter story to immerse yourself in, but it offers adventure on a scale that belies those number of pages. The stakes are personal yet universal at the same time, and while you know that things will work out in the end, there will be a moment or two when you wonder how in the universe a good ending would be possible. And when you do reach its end and you feel relief when the recollections of an old adventure is over, you also recognize that it comes with an undercurrent of deeper emotions. Sadness would be foremost, but there's also a sense of hope.
In both my first and second reading of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I wasn't sure where it would take me, but by the Hempstocks, I was all in. And I would still be when I read it a third time in the future.
Happy reading!!Labels: Adventure, Books, Fantasy, Fiction, Neil Gaiman, Re-read, Reading List, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
