Stuff I'm Reading: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
- Franklyn Thomas
- Sep 5, 2017
- 2 min read
My second Neil Gaiman book this summer, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a much shorter, more concentrated burst of the surreal storytelling found in American Gods. A fantastical story of repressed memory and the magic of childhood, Ocean clocks in at a sparse 178 pages, but everything in those pages is dense, filling, and dripping with beauty.
Ocean follows an unnamed narrator as he returns to his hometown for a funeral. He finds himself drawn to a farm at the end of the road he grew up on and finds that very little has changed about the farm and its occupants, the Hempstocks. He remembers the three women that live there—Ginnie; her mother, Old Mrs. Hempstock; and her daughter, Lettie, who in his memory had moved to Australia when they were both still children. He heads to the duck pond at the back of the property that Lettie used to call her ocean, and once he sits down, he remembers details of his childhood: some of them different than he thought, some of them that he had forgotten, and some that couldn’t possibly have happened.
Ocean was an entertaining story that effectively used flashback to convey a look at childhood through the eyes of an adult. The narrator frequently calls out the childish behavior from when he was seven as well as the things he saw differently, such as the time he witnessed his father having an affair with his nanny, the villainous Ursula Monkton. At the same time, the clarity of the memory is engrossing. Through most of the story, the narrator’s memory of events is clear and unbroken, even if he doubts how real it was. Also, Gaiman tells a great story involving the Hempstocks and their mystery without ruining it by explaining who and what they are.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is an extraordinary novel. Don’t let its slim profile fool you: like the Hempstock women, there is more to this story than the look of the book.
Pros: Slim novel, engaging read, wonderful story
Cons: Very short, ambiguous ending
Rating: 4 stars.
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