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The Ocean at the End of the Lane Review

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Neil Gaiman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 48,484 ratings

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Ignite your imagination with this immersive fantasy read!

A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s first new novel for adults since his #1 New York Times bestseller Anansi Boys.

This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real...

From the Publisher


	Fragile Things	Smoke and Mirros	Coraline	American Gods	Stardust	The Neil Gaiman Reader

Customer Reviews	2,404	2,326	20,047	1,176	16,354	697
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2013: Neil Gaiman's intent was simple: to write a short story. What he ended up with instead was The Ocean at the of the Lane--his first adult novel since Anansi Boys came out in 2005, and a narrative so thoughtful and thrilling that it's as difficult to stop reading as it was for Gaiman to stop writing. Forty years ago, our narrator, who was then a seven-year-old boy, unwittingly discovered a neighboring family’s supernatural secret. What happens next is an imaginative romp through otherwordly adventure that could only come from Gaiman's magical mind. Childhood innocence is tested and transcended as we see what getting between ancient, mystic forces can cost, as well as what can be gained from the power of true friendship. The result is a captivating tale that is equal parts sweet, sad, and spooky. --Robin A. Rothman

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In Gaiman’s first novel for adults since Anansi Boys (2005), the never-named fiftyish narrator is back in his childhood homeland, rural Sussex, England, where he’s just delivered the eulogy at a funeral. With “an hour or so to kill” afterward, he drives about—aimlessly, he thinks—until he’s at the crucible of his consciousness: a farmhouse with a duck pond. There, when he was seven, lived the Hempstocks, a crone, a housewife, and an 11-year-old girl, who said they were grandmother, mother, and daughter. Now, he finds the crone and, eventually, the housewife—the same ones, unchanged—while the girl is still gone, just as she was at the end of the childhood adventure he recalls in a reverie that lasts all afternoon. He remembers how he became the vector for a malign force attempting to invade and waste our world. The three Hempstocks are guardians, from time almost immemorial, situated to block such forces and, should that fail, fight them. Gaiman mines mythological typology—the three-fold goddess, the water of life (the pond, actually an ocean)—and his own childhood milieu to build the cosmology and the theater of a story he tells more gracefully than any he’s told since Stardust (1999). And don’t worry about that “for adults” designation: it’s a matter of tone. This lovely yarn is good for anyone who can read it. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: That this is the popular author’s first book for adults in eight years pretty much sums up why this will be in demand. --Ray Olson

Review

“[W]orthy of a sleepless night . . . a fairy tale for adults that explores both innocence lost and the enthusiasm for seeing what’s past one’s proverbial fence . . . Gaiman is a master of creating worlds just a step to the left of our own.” — USA Today on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Remarkable . . . wrenchingly, gorgeously elegiac. . . . [I]n The Ocean at the End of the Lane, [Gaiman] summons up childhood magic and adventure while acknowledging their irrevocable loss, and he stitches the elegiac contradictions together so tightly that you won’t see the seams.” — Star Tribune (Minneapolis) on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Gaiman has crafted an achingly beautiful memoir of an imagination and a spellbinding story that sets three women at the center of everything. . . .[I]t’s a meditation on memory and mortality, a creative reflection on how the defining moments of childhood can inhabit the worlds we imagine.” — Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI)

“His prose is simple but poetic, his world strange but utterly believable―if he was South American we would call this magic realism rather than fantasy.” — The Times (London) on THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE

“Poignant and heartbreaking, eloquent and frightening, impeccably rendered, it’s a fable that reminds us how our lives are shaped by childhood experiences, what we gain from them and the price we pay.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[A] compelling tale for all ages . . . entirely absorbing and wholly moving.” — New York Daily News on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“[A] story concerning the bewildering gulf between the innocent and the authoritative, the powerless and the powerful, the child and the adult. . . . Ocean is a novel to approach without caution; the author is clearly operating at the height of his career.” — The Atlantic Wire on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Ocean has that nearly invisible prose that keeps the focus firmly on the storytelling, and not on the writing. . . . This simple exterior hides something much more interesting; in the same way that what looks like a pond can really be an ocean.” — io9

“This slim novel, gorgeously written, keeps its talons in you long after you’ve finished.” — New York Post on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“In Gaiman’s latest romp through otherworldly adventure, a young boy discovers a neighboring family’s supernatural secret. Soon his innocence is tested by ancient, magical forces, and he learns the power of true friendship. The result is a captivating read, equal parts sweet, sad, and spooky.” — Parade on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“’The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ is fun to read, filled with his trademarked blend of sinister whimsy. Gaiman’s writing is like dangerous candy―you’re certain there’s ground glass somewhere, but it just tastes so good!” — Bookish (Houston Chronicle book blog)

“The impotence of childhood is often the first thing sentimental adults forget about it; Gaiman is able to resurrect, with brutal immediacy, the abject misery of being unable to control one’s own life.” — Laura Miller, Salon

“[W]ry and freaky and finally sad. . . . This is how Gaiman works his charms. . . . He crafts his stories with one eye on the old world, on Irish folktales and Robin Hood and Camelot, and the other on particle physics and dark matter.” — Chicago Tribune on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“When I finally closed the last page of this slim volume it was with the realization that I’d just finished one of those uncommon perfect books that come along all too rarely in a reader’s life.” — Charles DeLint, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

From the Back Cover

UK National Book Awards 2013 "Book of the Year"

"Fantasy of the very best." Wall Street Journal

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

"[Gaiman's] mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown." New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

By Neil Gaiman

HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright © 2013 Neil Gaiman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-225565-5
[
I.
Nobody came to my seventh birthday party.
There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat
beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the
center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My
mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the
bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before,
and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their
first book.
When it became obvious that nobody was coming, my mother
lit the seven candles on the cake, and I blew them out. I ate a slice of
the cake, as did my little sister and one of her friends (both of them
attending the party as observers, not participants) before they fled,
giggling, to the garden.
Party games had been prepared by my mother but, because
nobody was there, not even my sister, none of the party games were
played, and I unwrapped the newspaper around the pass-the-parcel
gift myself, revealing a blue plastic Batman figure. I was sad that
nobody had come to my party, but happy that I had a Batman figure,
and there was a birthday present waiting to be read, a boxed set of
the Narnia books, which I took upstairs. I lay on the bed and lost
myself in the stories.
I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.

10 Neil Gaiman
My parents had also given me a Best of Gilbert and Sullivan LP, to
add to the two that I already had. I had loved Gilbert and Sullivan
since I was three, when my father's youngest sister, my aunt, took me
to see Iolanthe, a play filled with lords and fairies. I found the existence
and nature of the fairies easier to understand than that of the lords.
My aunt had died soon after, of pneumonia, in the hospital.
That evening my father arrived home from work and he brought
a cardboard box with him. In the cardboard box was a soft-haired
black kitten of uncertain gender, whom I immediately named Fluffy,
and which I loved utterly and wholeheartedly.
Fluffy slept on my bed at night. I talked to it, sometimes, when
my little sister was not around, half-expecting it to answer in a
human tongue. It never did. I did not mind. The kitten was affec-
tionate and interested and a good companion for someone whose
seventh birthday party had consisted of a table with iced biscuits and
a blancmange and cake and fifteen empty folding chairs.
I do not remember ever asking any of the other children in my
class at school why they had not come to my party. I did not need
to ask them. They were not my friends, after all. They were just the
people I went to school with.
I made friends slowly, when I made them.
I had books, and now I had my kitten. We would be like Dick
Whittington and his cat, I knew, or, if Fluffy proved particularly in-
telligent, we would be the miller's son and Puss-in-Boots. The kitten
slept on my pillow, and it even waited for me to come home from
school, sitting on the driveway in front of my house, by the fence,
until, a month later, it was run over by the taxi that brought the opal
miner to stay at my house.
I was not there when it happened.
I got home from school that day, and my kitten was not waiting

The Ocean at the End of the Lane 11
to meet me. In the kitchen was a tall, rangy man with tanned skin
and a checked shirt. He was drinking coffee at the kitchen table, I
could smell it. In those days all coffee was instant coffee, a bitter
dark brown powder that came out of a jar.
“I'm afraid I had a little accident arriving here,” he told me,
cheerfully. “But not to worry.” His accent was clipped, unfamiliar: it
was the first South African accent I had heard.
He, too, had a cardboard box on the table in front of him.
“The black kitten, was he yours?” he asked.
“It's called Fluffy,” I said.
“Yeah. Like I said. Accident coming here. Not to worry. Dis-
posed of the corpse. Don't have to trouble yourself. Dealt with the
matter. Open the box.”
“What?”
He pointed to the box. “Open it,” he said.
The opal miner was a tall man. He wore jeans and checked shirts
every time I saw him, except the last. He had a thick chain of pale
gold around his neck. That was gone the last time I saw him, too.
I did not want to open his box. I wanted to go off on my own.
I wanted to cry for my kitten, but I could not do that if anyone else
was there and watching me. I wanted to mourn. I wanted to bury my
friend at the bottom of the garden, past the green-grass fairy ring,
into the rhododendron bush cave, back past the heap of grass cut-
tings, where nobody ever went but me.
The box moved.
“Bought it for you,” said the man. “Always pay my debts.”
I reached out, lifted the top flap of the box, wondering if this
was a joke, if my kitten would be in there. Instead a ginger face stared
up at me truculently.
The opal miner took the cat out of the box.

12 Neil Gaiman
He was a huge, ginger-striped tomcat, missing half an ear. He
glared at me angrily. This cat had not liked being put in a box. He
was not used to boxes. I reached out to stroke his head, feeling un-
faithful to the memory of my kitten, but he pulled back so I could
not touch him, and he hissed at me, then stalked off to a
(Continues...)Excerpted from The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Copyright © 2013 Neil Gaiman. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009NFHF0Q
Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; Reissue edition (June 18, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 18, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1298 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 259 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #3,148 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #5 in Read & Listen for $14.99 or Less
- #6 in British & Irish Literary Fiction
- #12 in Read & Listen for Less

Customer Reviews:
4.4 48,484 ratings

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Neil Gaiman
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Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.
See more on the author's page
Elise Hurst
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Elise Hurst is a writer, fine artist and illustrator specialising in a vintage alternate reality peopled by (amongst others) lions and tigers and bears. Although she most frequently creates picture books, her work has featured in situations as varied as book covers and illustrated novels, to cards and prints, cd covers, chocolates and an imaginative advertising campaign. She works most frequently in the media of oils, watercolour and ink drawings.
She lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
Recent books:
'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Elise Hurst.
'Trying' by Kobi Yamada, Elise Hurst
https://www.facebook.com/EliseHurstArtistIllustrator/
https://www.instagram.com/elise.hurst/
Photo credit: Darren James
See more on the author's page

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B. Case

Adult fairy tales don't get much better than this

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2013

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Right up front I should admit, I'd never heard of Neil Gaiman before I read an enthusiastic newspaper review about this book and decided to preorder it a few days ago. Last night, it was wirelessly delivered to my Kindle and this morning, I picked it up and started reading. Almost instantly, I was so absorbed and lost in the storytelling experience that I didn't do anything else until I finished it a few hours later.

It's a short book; it's enchanting; it's very well written...definitely top-quality fantasy literature. I'm not a fan of fantasy literature, but this book swept me away into such a delightful and fascinating series of incredible adventures--or should I say misadventures--that I could not pull myself away. The author is correct to warn that this is not a fable for children...the reality is far too stark and dark, and there are definitely some adult themes.

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" is a tale about a lonely bookish seven-year old whose life takes a terrifying turn into a dark and creepy reality. The child is never named, but in recent interviews, the author admits that this child is very much like he was at that age. The child lives in the lovely English countryside of Sussex--the same environment where the author grew up. And like Gaiman, the child is wise, responsible, and moral beyond his years. The parents are blithely confident that nothing bad could happen to their brilliant bookish son in such a bucolic setting. But of course, bad things can, and do happen, especially to the pure and innocent...

The parents have no idea that the Hempstocks--an eleven-year-old girl, her mother, and grandmother--who live by a pond at the end of the lane, are really a group of immortals who play at being human. Our seven-year-old child makes friends with the girl, Lettie Hempstock, and she introduces him to the pond, which is really an ocean. Eventually, our narrator and Lettie take a trip into a higher plain of reality that is entered somehow through the property owned by the Hempstocks, and so begins a series of remarkable misadventures with unforeseen consequences.

This novel is a heroic tale about the age-old battle between childhood innocence and mythic forces. The book will charm you, fill you with awe, make you feel on edge, surprise you, and make you want to keep on reading no mater what important obligations you might have waiting for you to accomplish.

Since finishing the book this afternoon, I was so curious about this fine writer that I started doing research into his life, philosophy, and writing. It seems that in prepublication interviews, Gaiman says that he's prouder of this particular work than anything else he's ever written...and, as I learned today, this is an author who has had an insanely prolific career spanning blockbuster successes across a large number of different creative media. He says he's put an enormous amount of effort into writing and rewriting this book in order to get the tone, words, and dramatic focus just right. A number of critics have already said they consider this work to be as close to sterling literary fiction as Gaiman is ever likely to get.

Indeed, I was very impressed. For me, this work is, without doubt, first-rate fantasy and escapist fiction...and very fine literature, as well. It delivers a highly imaginative, fabulous and fascinating fable that envelops, and attempts to explain, everything in the space-time continuum. Yes, it's that ambitious! It had me hooked from the first to the last page. Simply put: it is an incredible gem of a novel.

1,303 people found this helpful

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JordanJasper

Another Achingly Beautiful and Exquisitely Crafted Gift from Gaiman

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2013

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I had no idea, really, what to expect from this new novel. I had not "tripped the literary light fantastic" with one of Neil's works since the fine "Graveyard Book" and he had been so heavily immersed in the vortex of social media (from what I could tell) that I wondered if his output --or the quality of his output-- might be adversely affected. Indeed, after reading his prologue, (the protagonist is never named as a child or as an adult in this first-person narrative), I wondered if Gaiman had perhaps gone off the rails. The prologue was such a disoriented, rambling mess full of commas and clunks and stuttered sentences and so much disconnected atmosphere that I began to panic.

"We've lost the great Neil Gaiman!" I gasped to the wall in disbelief. I think I may have even started to sweat, for I have so enjoyed and treasured his work through the years -- its reliability and soulful craftsmanship.

I need not have feared, and no Gaiman fan ought to fear, either. It soon became apparent that the aforementioned prologue was intended to introduce the reader to a man clearly mired in confusion and a haze of uncertain memories about his past as he attends a funeral and decides, on an inexplicable impulse, to take a drive down the country lane where he lived long ago as a child. He finds an astonishing-but-subtle magic waiting there for him beside a nondescript farmhouse pond and the sweeping truth of his lost youthful experiences in the neighborhood comes flooding back.

Once Gaiman begins to weave the narrative of the story proper, he is in full command of his usual powers, duly unraveling for us a tapestry of imaginative brilliance, unforgettable imagery, poignant reflection on the nature of worldly (and otherworldly) reality and some of the most opulent, original characterizations of his entire career. The unnamed child at the heart of the tale is a book-loving, introverted, but never the less brave little fellow in his own way, and a series of events both mundane and disturbing lead him to visit the farm down at the bottom of the lane, where dwell the three Hempstock females -- eleven year-old Lettie, her mother Ginnie and Old Mrs. Hempstock, the matriarch. It becomes swiftly apparent that these women are not exactly "of this world," despite their homely and winsome ways. The imperative destiny of their existence in the boy's suddenly frightening and fast-changing life is never fully explained, but their relationship to him becomes crucial, for the child has stumbled upon a gateway between worlds, as if by accident, and he is soon to need the mystical and powerful help of the Hempstock women ... for other, less benevolent forces have found their way into this innocuous corner of the world, as well.

At the symbolic heart of this novel is the barnyard pond, which Lettie Hempstock calls her "ocean," for it has apparently carried her and her mother and grandmother across vast expanses of time, space, and magic despite its seeming insignificance, its everyday plainness. The aching, almost heartbreaking simplicity and poignancy of Gaiman's use of the pond is one of the most subtly powerful devices he has ever employed in his works.

I will reveal no spoilers, beyond the fact that Gaiman re-explores the themes of lost worlds, parallel worlds, doors between worlds, and the helpers and villains who journey to our sphere via those doors. Mythological themes are likewise evoked, in grand Gaiman tradition, but one of his finest strengths has always been the glorious economy of his writing style and the ability to resist telling the reader too much, thereby leaving us tantalized and struck with a sense of awe, wonder and mystery appropriate to this kind of fairy tale or fantasy. Some have noted that this book bears a great deal of similarity to "Coraline" but any similarities are incidental, at most, in my opinion. This book has the potency of a long-cherished fable and is rendered in the first-person (very beautifully, I might add) and, as mentioned, Gaiman's themes of primordial myth, god-like beings dwelling among modern humans, and interweaving worlds are hardly unique to "Coraline" or this new book; these leitmotifs are features of almost all of his books and the presence of a child protagonist and some decidedly adult themes make this book quite different from Coraline or Graveyard. In tone, "Ocean" stands wholly on its own while reminding me in some ways of the splendor, dark charm and radiant beauty of "Stardust," only the setting is more contemporary and thus perhaps a bit more accessible and relevant. It is also more daring in its insinuations about the very nature of the fabric that holds the universe(s) together.

When I mention fabric, I do so with the warning that fabric might just instill a bit of the same terror that buttons managed to instill in Coraline, in an altogether different way.

The book is indeed short, and in just a few places the dialogue gets a small, very tiny bit trite when it comes to certain characters seeking to explaining great mysteries of creation, but these factors are negligible only for the deduction of one half-star (I would have rated this a 4 and 1/2 read). With "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" Gaiman has delivered yet another work of completeness in its beauty, terror and affecting honesty. With the mountains of unreadable pulp and garbage heaping-up all around us and posing as "novels" in today's market, Gaiman's latest stands as a beacon and reminder that good books require good writers who have worked relentlessly to pay some dues, hone their skills and who pride themselves on their craftsmanship, along with the impeccable standards exacted by proper editors.

Watch, read, learn and enjoy, book-lovers of the world -- we are fortunate to have Gaiman write so beautifully for us in this often undeserving age of compromised quality.

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osvaldo

Hermosa edición y libro impecable.

Reviewed in Mexico on February 7, 2020

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La edición en sí es hermosa, aunque hubiera deseado que fuese un libro cosido y no pegado, al ser un libro de la editorial Morrow no se podía esperar otra cosa, sin embargo he de reconocerles que el hecho de que esté impreso en papel couché, que la edición tenga un cuidado espectacular y que me recuerde tanto a la edición de A monster calls de Patrick Ness han hecho que se lleve las 5 estrellas, la ilustradora es una genio! Todo el libro tiene ilustraciones prácticamente no hay hoja que quede en blanco pues hasta las guardas del libro vienen con información.

La historia es muy emotiva, nostálgica y conmovedora, ese realismo mágico que pasa de un sueño a la realidad y viceversa. Si saben inglés y quieren empezar con un libro de Neil Gaiman que no sea tan infantil como puede ser Coraline o Stardust les recomendaría a parte de El libro del cementerio, este sin lugar a dudas. Soy coleccionista y aunque está es una edición que normalmente no taeria en la calle leyendo es una edición que bien vale la pena tener en casa solo de lo hermosa que es.

5 people found this helpful

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Marco Lorini

Uma breve viagem para um mundo onde as coisas eram mais fáceis e mais bonitas.

Reviewed in Brazil on April 22, 2019

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Maravilhoso, sem sombra de dúvidas nenhuma um dos melhores livros que já li. Neil Gaiman te prende a história de uma forma única e cativante, sensacional. Recomendo.

2 people found this helpful

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Juan Manuel

Maravilloso

Reviewed in Spain on July 4, 2018

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Una gran historia de fantasía repleta de emoción y giros argumentales muy inesperados. Una trama para dejarte llevar. Lectura fácil y ligera para nivel de inglés C1.

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Btyler00

Loved it

Reviewed in Japan on March 18, 2021

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Received the book earlier than expected and was very happy to dive into it right away. I read the whole thing in one sitting. I absolutely loved it.

Matt Hill

Beautiful, dark, nightmare fairy-tale for adults and older children

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2016

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This is a dark fairy-tale for any adult that has ever been seven years old. It speaks of childhood memories, of strange events that have been forgotten for decades. Gaiman takes us on a timeless tale of the extraordinary wonder of childhood discovery, and the loss that follows in adulthood.

The story begins with our unnamed narrator leaving a funeral wake to take a drive in the country. Seemingly aimless, buried memories direct him to the place where he grew up as a small boy in the 1960s. The family home is long gone, but the lane remains and he recalls the farm at its end. Finding himself at the farm and sitting by its duck-pond, his memories of the summer of his seventh year are woken and that story begins in earnest.

George is a lonely boy. He lives in an old house set back on a quiet lane somewhere in the Sussex countryside. He loses himself in books in lieu of adventures with friends he doesn’t have. He loves myths and legends and like most seven year old boys, he delights in in exploring the natural world. One day a tragedy befalls the South African lodger who is staying at George’s family home. Discovered dead on the back seat of the family car, the lodger’s death sets in motion a strange adventure that no adult would believe — but that every seven year old would know is truest experience they will ever have.

The lodger’s death leads George to Lettie Hempstock, an eleven year-old girl who lives with her mother and grandmother on nearby Hempstock farm. From the start we understand that this family is more than they appear: Lettie explains to George that their duck-pond is an ocean and it was brought with them when they travelled from the Old Country. Friendship with Lettie is exciting: she sees and knows things that no normal eleven year old girl should, and George accepts it without question.

But their friendship comes at a cost: The lodger’s death has awoken a mysterious creature; a creature that may fulfil any man’s wish but at a cost far greater than he could afford. Gaiman weaves the fantastic with the every-day as he builds a compelling and mesmerising world that sits outside our common human experience. George is caught at the centre of a tale of ancient terrors, uncommon magic and forces that have existed beyond the beginning of time.

To reveal too much more of Gaiman’s dark tale would be to spoil it. Evoking the voice of Alan Garner, and animating the landscape with dark terrors, Gaiman weaves a new fairy-tale that feels familiar yet is fresh, beguiling and menacing in equal measure. It took me right back to the first time I read Weirdstone and left me similarly transfixed.

The writing itself is beautiful. The voice given to young George is pitch perfect. Gaiman’s ability to recall the feelings and experiences of this lonely boy is so accurate that it’s heartbreaking. Every experience is keenly felt, and I related to so closely to George that I was transported back to my own childhood with its own traumas and tears.

This is a timeless story of childhood dreams and nightmares. It asks questions about memory and loss and whether our recollection of our formative experiences can ever be trusted as the truth. But beyond these questions, the story gives us hope: hope that we can be worthy of the friendships we make and of the life that is given to us.

I know I will re-read this tale many times. It will always make me weep because it holds the truth of childhood at its heart and respects it. It’s a story that knows we mustn’t ever forget what it’s like to be seven years old, for fear that we’ll forget how to live as an adult. While there is darkness and tragedy in Gaiman’s tale, there is ultimately hope — a hope that we be kinder, gentler adults and remember our childhood dreams so that our own children might have their own dreams too.

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane

HarperCollins Publishers

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Neil Gaiman

Elise Hurst

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