The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

by Neil Gaiman

Hardcover, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

PR6057.A319

Publication

William Morrow (2013), Edition: 1st, 181 pages

Description

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

Media reviews

The Ocean at the End of the Lane arouses, and satisfies, the expectations of the skilled reader of fairytales, and stories which draw on fairytales. Fairytales, of course, were not invented for children, and deal ferociously with the grim and the bad and the dangerous. But they promise a kind of
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resolution, and Gaiman keeps this promise.
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3 more
[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.
The story is tightly plotted and exciting. Reading it feels a lot like diving into an extremely smart, morally ambiguous fairy tale. And indeed, Gaiman's adult protagonist observes at one point that fairy tales aren't for kids or grownups — they're just stories. In Gaiman's version of the fairy
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tale, his protagonist's adult and child perspectives are interwoven seamlessly, giving us a sense of how he experienced his past at that time, as well as how it affected him for the rest of his life.
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Reading Gaiman's new novel, his first for adults since 2005's The Anansi Boys, is like listening to that rare friend whose dreams you actually want to hear about at breakfast. The narrator, an unnamed Brit, has returned to his hometown for a funeral. Drawn to a farm he dimly recalls from his youth,
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he's flooded with strange memories: of a suicide, the malign forces it unleashed and the three otherworldly females who helped him survive a terrifying odyssey. Gaiman's at his fantasy-master best here—the struggle between a boy and a shape-shifter with "rotting-cloth eyes" moves at a speedy, chilling clip. What distinguishes the book, though, is its evocation of the powerlessness and wonder of childhood, a time when magic seems as likely as any other answer and good stories help us through. "Why didn't adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and ... dangerous fairies?" the hero wonders. Sometimes, they do.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member jnwelch
In [The Ocean at the End of the Lane], an unnamed man returns, for a funeral, to a small English town where he grew up. He slips away afterwards to drive the roads he remembers, and finds himself back at the Hempstock farmhouse near his now torn down house. He begins to remember the mysterious
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Hempstock women who lived there, grandmother, mother, daughter.. The daughter, Lettie, befriended him as a boy, and took him on a scary adventure he had long forgotten. She loved the pond on their land, and called it Ocean, saying it was much more than it appeared. We learn she was right about that.

He remembers how the scary adventure began, including with a coin from nowhere that gets caught in his throat. Lettie recognizes this as a symptom of a much larger problem, and the two of them set off on a beautifully described journey to the edge of the Hempstock farmland to fix it. What they find there is one of the scarier creations in modern literature, and one that will be exceedingly difficult to outwit. The danger of that creation, its effect on his family and home, and the danger of the only way to get rid of it, is contrasted throughout with the comfort and security of the Hempstock home, and the deep knowledge of the three Hempstock women who are unafraid.

At one point the boy/man says, "I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were. Adult stories never made sense, and they were slow to start. They made me feel that they were like secrets, masonic, mythic secrets to adulthood." This book is mythic, and it isn't an adult or children's story. There are scary moments, including a child's worst nightmare; there are the whole wide universe and beyond moments; there are connections that are untrue and connections that are true; and there are connections that are more than true, that I'll be thinking about for a long time to come.

It's a short, brilliant piece of work. Right up there with his best. I read it in one sitting because there was no way I was going to put it down.
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LibraryThing member rosalita
How does he do it? How does Neil Gaiman, a grown man "of a certain age" manage to so effortlessly recall the inner voice and outer actions of a little boy? This short novel is a delightful mix of coming-of-age and creepy thriller, with a final chapter that made me sigh deeply in satisfaction of how
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the story ended despite the lack of "happy ever after".

Ocean's story is told through the memories of a middle-aged man looking back at events that happened when he was 7 years old. The grown man is back in his home county in England for a funeral (though we never learn who has died), and he takes the opportunity to revisit his childhood home and that of Lettie Hempstock, the slightly (or greatly, depending on how you look at it) older girl who lives down the lane. Behind her house is what looks like a duck pond to our young narrator, though Lettie insists it is an ocean. As the man sits on a bench next to the pond, he begins to remember what really happened all those years ago.

Gaiman perfectly inhabits the body and voice of his young narrator. Again and again, the boy's reaction to those around him — his pesky little sister, his loving but somewhat absentminded parents, Lettie and her mysterious womenfolk, the horrific nanny who comes to live with him and who cannot be budged — is pitch-perfect. The little boy is shy and quiet, much more comfortable in the company of a book than other boys his age. Even as Lettie takes him on some eerie adventures, and helps him deal with the consequences of those adventures back in the real world, Gaiman makes the reader feel the little boy's inner strength as well as his sheer terror.

The real-world elements have the ring of sincerity about them, and strangely so do the otherworldly elements. One of Gaiman's gifts is that he doesn't try to over-explain the hows and whys of the supernatural elements that appear in his books. They simply are, and the reader believes and struggles to understand even as Gaiman's characters do. We never fully learn where Lettie and her kin came from or when, but in the end it doesn't matter. They exist, clearly, because the little boy sees and feels them and the consequences of what they do. No one watching television for the first time ever demands to know how the picture and sound gets inside that little box before they can enjoy the sensation. There's a time and a place for magic, and no one understands that better than Gaiman.
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LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sussex, England. 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,
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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, 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.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, 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. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

My Review: A charming way to wile away a Saturday afternoon. It's a lovely story. Been told before, as what has not, but to call tis little entertainment a groundbreaking work by a master is absurd.

Did I enjoy it? Oh yes. I liked it fine. As always in a Gaiman book, no one changes. Nameless narrator as child confronts horrible reality that all is not as it seems, he is not Safe, and the world can be whisked away in a flood of knowledge. He goes on being a child. Nameless adult narrator comes to terms with loss, only he doesn't really because he can't remember what it is he's coming to terms with.

The Norns, Urðr, Skuld, and Verðandi, are brilliant constructs, even if there is doubt about their separate and uninfluenced creation in Norse mythology and not grafts of the Greek Fates. The Norns, and their amazing well, describe all too clearly the experience of being alive in the elegant universe that quantum physics tells us lies under the pretty picture we lie ourselves to sleep with. Gaiman clearly Gets It. He expresses his clear-eyed and seemingly unflinching comprehension and acceptance of the unreality of the illusion we inhabit in this book. That's refreshing and it's pleasant.

But brilliant? Groundbreaking? Really now. James Joyce was brilliant. Proust was brilliant. Beckett's plays are brilliant. I will perform the osculum infame on Fox News if someone can make a respectable case for Gaiman being brilliant by those lights.

A worthy and amusing entertainment. There is nothing whatever wrong with that.
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LibraryThing member clfisha
Category 5: Superstition Tag: fantastical occurrences

[The Ocean at the End of the Lane] by Neil Gaiman
A bite sized book of memory and magic and adventure

“I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a
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great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”

A beautifully drawn slip of a book. A book designed to carry you away one dreary afternoon, back to your childhood and days of adventure. Where life was full of potential magic, where a pond could be an ocean and where an old lady can remember the Big Bang. Where a tragic suicide of a lodger brings dark magic to a young boy.

“I do not miss childhood, but I do miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from the things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”

He captures perfectly the wonder and terror of childhood, the aching vulnerability (cue some truly creepy moments) as much as captures adult nostalgia and all the normal worries we carry with us. The story skips along and there are characters to love here, the 3 generations of Hempstocks, our stalwart narrator, even the baddie. He also captures the landscape of growing up in England during a certain time, I suspect though he makes his experience familiar to all and that’s his genius. It's his genius to exude such a love of humanity off the page, it is a creepy and sometimes sad read, but ultimately this is a comfort blanket of a read.

“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”

Although its almost too pure distilled Gaiman for my taste, too rich and cloying with knowing (yet beautiful) wisdom stamped all over the story. Too strong a taste for me, it’s also quite short and in a way simple I prefer his more sprawling works such as [American Gods] or [Sandman] and oddly even though I was truly gripped when I read it, it is a story which has faded quickly.

Good yet sadly forgettable, Still its getting rave reviews across the board so I am in the minority. I do recommend it though, fantasy & YA lovers and all wistful adults who want to remember a time when they were young. It's not a bad place to try Gaiman eithe
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LibraryThing member Crazymamie
"I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were. Adult stories never made sense, and they were so slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, Masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn't adults want to
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read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?"

I LOVED this book! It is a deliciously creepy fairy tale for adults. There is wisdom here and truths, and things that you knew when you were younger but have forgotten. The protagonist is in his forties, and he has returned to his hometown for a funeral. With time on his hands between the service and the reception, he follows a whim and returns to the neighborhood where he spent his childhood. He drives down the old lane to the Hempstock's farm.

"I remembered it before I turned the corner and saw it, in all its dilapidated red-brick glory: The Hempstock's farmhouse. It took me by surprise, although that was where the lane had always ended....I wondered whether, after all these years, there was anyone still living there, or, more precisely, if the Hempstocks were still living there. It seemed unlikely, but then, from what little I remembered, they had been unlikely people....I had been here, hadn't I, a long time ago? I was sure I had. Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys that are forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good."

They do still live there, and seeing Mrs. Hempstock again reminds him of her daughter, Lettie, and the pond at the back of the property. And memory is a funny thing because when he asks if he can look at the pond he remembers that Lettie had a different name for it. What was it? The sea? No...it was the ocean. And with that memory comes the rest of the story, the one that started when he had just turned seven.

Here is an interesting tidbit that you might not have noticed - the photo from the back cover, the one with the little boy poised on the drainpipe. It's Neil Gaiman at age seven! I loved that he used an actual photo of himself at that age to depict a scene from the book! How cool is that?!
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LibraryThing member Carmenere
I'm not quite sure how to take this novel. I'm not sure what it's all about but I am sure that many readers will take away many different notions of what this story means to them.
For me, a little seven year old boy who unknowingly has taken a bite from the proverbial forbidden apple and, poof, his
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innocence is lost. He sees that his world is more than books and playtime. It is also about those who enter his life and rip the fabric of his universe, those who rent away his childhood. Growing up can be a sad thing and loss of innocence is tragic for those who have it pushed upon them.
Gaiman uses his usual folkloric style of writing to develop a story that is both haunting and horrid. But, it's not all bad news. It's about how, despite what life throws at us, we put our past behind us, move on and fill the holes in our heart, which were left there through disappointment and betrayal, and fill it with stuff in which we find happiness.
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LibraryThing member TheLostEntwife
Before I get into this review let me admit something: I am a huge, huge Neil Gaiman fan (but really, who isn't?). That said, The Ocean at the End of the Lane quickly climbed to the top of my favorites list, not just favorites of Gaiman's work, but favorites of all time. It's that good. It also
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packs a punch for being as small of a book as it is - don't let its size fool you.

Speaking of shorter novels, Gaiman does this so well. He doesn't add fluff and unnecessary bits of plot that do nothing other than bulk up the word count. He gets to the heart of the story and then, once he's led us there, he just twists and twists until his readers are so entwined into the story that it's nearly impossible to free ourselves. So I was grateful for the length of this book because it meant, after putting it down (finished), that I could finally go to sleep. But then.. came the dreams.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane tells the story of a grown man revisiting a place of his youth. It's filled with beautiful imagery, such as the birthday party of a 7 year old boy, that's designed to tug just right at the heart strings. It has myths and fantasies and a beautiful look at the power of the female that had me giddily clutching my book with happiness. The Ocean at the End of the Lane had all of this without overwhelmingly preaching a heavy-handed message. Instead, Gaiman tells a gentle story that has its share of horrors and happiness and, similar to Coraline and Neverwhere, the result is a fantasy world that I would love to visit.

Chances are if you are reading this review, you already planned on picking up this book. But if, by chance, you are one of the few who has not experienced Gaiman's work, this would not be a bad place to start at all.
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LibraryThing member beserene
I read this slim novel weeks ago, but it has taken me an age to decide what to say about it here. The bottom line, of course, is that I loved it. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't. As with other Neil Gaiman books, this story is rich in atmosphere, deeply connected to folklore, and striking in
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its certain balance between the personal and the mythic.

In this particular case, perhaps unusually so, the personal weighs in more strongly and that, as it happens, just makes the novel even better. Our main character, who is remembering a sequence of mysterious, magical, and scary events from his childhood, is entirely human and intimately us -- the reader, every reader. He is also indelibly Gaiman; an author who has always had a distinct, strong "voice", Gaiman has given this novel an extra dose of his particular verbal lilt and his unique sensibilities.

The combination of the intimate and the universal is yet another dichotomy that the novel balances perfectly. It's important that the main character is not just relatable, but under our own skins. The story unfolds like one of our own memories, just slightly off kilter, not quite as it would have been possible -- a little bit creepier, a little bit darker than we would really want to face (and Gaiman's descriptions are, as ever, wickedly cool and coolly disturbing) and yet perfectly real for all of that. I use the word "real" deliberately here -- in the end (which of course I will not spoil), this book is very much about memory and the way the past sits within us, sometimes clear and sometimes misty. That closing note, that last scene, which acknowledges the truth of memory, should resonate as real for every adult reader.

And, in case there was any question, this is a book for grown-ups. That is not to say that only grown-ups can read it or that there is anything deeply inappropriate in it -- certainly not. You know what you are getting into by the name on the cover. But this is a book that strikes a spark of recognition in those who have known nostalgia, who have trekked a distance from their pasts, and who can feel the unreliability of memory. So much so, in fact, that when one pauses on the white space at the end of this novel, one might wonder if perhaps the things that one has just witnessed, in the literary sense, are real after all, only we have... well, you'll know when you read it.

And that is the real beauty of the book -- it brings back one perfect, ephemeral state of childhood; for just one moment, as the final page glides into place, it turns us into true believers. Briefly, after, when the book is closed, all the ordinary world seems vividly wrong. The sensation passes, I assure you. You'll be left quite bereft when it does. But that one, pure moment is something every reader should experience.
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LibraryThing member thatpirategirl
Every time I get my hands on a new Neil Gaiman book, I give myself the same mental disclaimer: "I know he's your favorite writer, but you can't just love ALL of his books. One day there will be one you don't love, and maybe this is it. You're an adult now, you're more cynical, maybe it turns out
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you have no patience for this whimsical stuff anymore. Get ready in case this is the one that disappoints you." But as soon as I begin reading, it's as if I'm just like the protagonist, wandering onto a farm that I vaguely remember from years before, staring into an unusual pond, and feeling a sudden rush of strange, scary, amazing memories that make me forget all about my cynical adult worries.

This is one of the most comforting books I've ever read, which sounds ridiculous when you consider it's about a young boy encountering various terrifying creatures that he's powerless to stop. But at the heart of the book is the Hempstock family, three strange women who stand between him and the frightening world that exists between the cracks of our own, who guide him when his family life begins to fall apart, and who cook the kind of food that makes your mouth water just reading about.

The worst thing I can say about this story is that in anyone else's hands, the plot probably wouldn't have amounted to much. But for Neil Gaiman it's all about atmosphere and tone -- gorgeous prose that immerses you in that exact feeling of being the kind of kid who just wants to read books and play with cats, but who can't help getting caught up in upsetting problems, whether it be family trouble or monstrous intruders. It's a story meant to illustrate the parts of childhood you wish you could return to and the parts you wish you could forget, and how it's all too intertwined to separate. But ultimately, this is the kind of book that makes you feel like everything is going to be okay.
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LibraryThing member kaylaraeintheway
When my (signed, first edition!) copy came in the mail, I just held it for a few minutes. It was smaller than I was expecting, but that didn't matter. Gaiman could keep me awake for days pondering a 7 page short story - a 175-page novel would more than satisfy me.

I stayed away from all reviews and
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possible spoilers for the plot of the book, and I'm really glad I did. In this review, I don't want to give anything away either. Instead, I just want to say that anyone who is a fan of Gaiman will love this book, and anyone who has never read anything by him before will definitely want to start in immediately on his other works (may I recommend Stardust and Coraline?)

Gaiman is a master of evoking powerful emotions in his readers. A simple sentence that, at first glance, may seem like nothing in the big scheme of the novel, will suddenly hit you a few pages later as being one of the most beautiful you ever read (until you get to the next chapter, at least).

This novel is about a child. But it is not for children. It is for the children inside of us, that some may forget exists sometimes. "Ocean" will help you remember, and make you never let go.

I only have one teeny tiny complaint; I wish it were longer. So much more could be said about the Hempstock women...but maybe Gaiman wants us to fill in the blanks ourselves.
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LibraryThing member andreablythe
Neil Gaiman is a long favorite of mine. I've read almost all of his bibliography, so I was thrilled to learn this novel was coming out.

The story revolves around a man who returns to where he grew up and begins to remember a series of terrifying events when he was a child. As a seven year old, he
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made friends with Lettie, the youngest member of the Hempstocks who live at the end of the lane. When a border within his home commits suicide, it sets of a series of strange events and unleashes frightening creatures.

This story didn't disappoint me one bit. It's interesting that this has been described as an adult novel, since its so clearly from the young boy's POV and Gaiman captures that youth, wonder, and fear perfectly. The boy is fully realized and made me remember my own youth. I saw one reviewer describe the sex scene as awkward, but it wasn't. It was sex from a child's perspective, which makes it seem strange and undefinable at the same time. The scene was well executed and showed the character's youth even more as the rent seemed unimportant to him.

I especially loved the Hempstocks and how they are portrayed. The three women are so clearly more than what they appear and have latent power. They are loving and warm and fascinating characters. I would love to see them turn up in more stories.

Gaiman also has a way of making magic seem matter of fact, just another part of the natural order, which I LOVE. It's one of my favorite things about his writing in general. That, along with his invention of creepy creatures that are dark and terrifying and yet somehow sympathetic, too. Ursula was evil and wicked and cruel and yet I pitied her in the end.

Fantastic book. I really, really enjoyed it.
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LibraryThing member psutto
Nobody looks like they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody….. And as for grown-ups…..I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re
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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….. Except for Granny of course

We are in familiar territory with the book, there are fates (maiden, mother, crone) type characters (although not outright called so), cats (that move the plot along), children struggling with adult themes and a bit of eye horror. Gaiman said that this started as a short story, that grew into a novellete, that grew into a novella, that grew into a novel at 56,000 words. It is peculiarly of the author, no-one quite like him although there are shades of Chesterton there. It has the usual Gaimanesque themes of the mythic in ordinary objects, the ocean of the title and the Hempstock's, yet this time it is a glimpse of Neil’s private mythology as the book has an autobiographical genesis. The story is suitably horrific, told as reminiscence and therefore through the eyes of a child, yet we adults can interpret things the child narrator doesn’t understand. The plot (no spoilers here – go get your own copy, you won’t regret it) romps along and before you know it you have reached the end of the book closing the last page with a satisfied sigh.

Overall – Great for fans new or old, one of his better novels, recommended.
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LibraryThing member stefferoo
3.5 stars. Returning to Sussex to attend a funeral, an unnamed middle-aged man visits the site of his childhood home, knowing that the house he grew up in no longer exists. But the farm at the end lane still stands and he is drawn to the pond in the back, a pond which an extraordinary girl named
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Lettie Hempstock once called an ocean. In this place, the man recalls a series of events in his past, of a dark time which began forty years earlier with the suicide of his family's lodger in their stolen car.

This was only the second novel I've read by Neil Gaiman (I'm not counting his short stories or comics, etc.) but I knew enough to know about his knack for storytelling, and particularly his style of using allusion in doing so. This has made me wary about picking up his stuff, because I tend not to be drawn to stories that are more metaphysical and abstract.

Because fables and mythological motifs often feature so heavily in his work, I've come to view a lot of Gaiman's stories as modern fairy tales. Ocean definitely has that vibe to it; as such, the book's description as "terrifying" and "menacing" notwithstanding, I found it more whimsical and odd than anything else. While not a negative factor by any means, admittedly I did expect the book to be somewhat more emotionally stirring.

That said, while it's not typically my kind of book, Ocean packs a pretty good punch, especially given its relatively short length. Gaiman has a way of making me care about his characters if not so much for his themes, and not to mention he also writes beautifully. Very few authors can do what he does to me with his prose, as in the case of this book where he uses such vivid imagery to paint fantastical landscapes and their creatures in my mind's eye.
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LibraryThing member SandDune
I loved this short book from Neil Gaiman. All the way through I was looking at the percentage left to read on my kindle and thinking that it was going down far too fast and I would finish it all too soon. But when I had finished it didn't seem that it was too short: it just seemed perfectly formed.
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I'm hard pressed to say exactly what it was that I liked about it: perhaps the combination of a totally believable real world interspersed with a totally believable fantasy world. And there was a twist at the end which added something quite special.

A man returns to look at his childhood home, long sold, on the day of a family funeral (we're never told whose) and finds himself carrying on to the end of the lane, to the farmhouse where his childhood friend Lettie Hempstock lived. Lettie, who was eleven (or was she) the year that he was seven, and no-one came to his birthday party. Lettie, who insisted that the duck pond at the end of the lane was an ocean that she had crossed as a baby when her family came from the old country. And when he had gone with his father and the police to collect his father's car, reported abandoned at the end of the lane, and then discovered to contain the dead body of their lodger who had committed suicide, it was Lettie who had taken him into the farmhouse away from the commotion outside. But Lettie had gone to Australia, hadn't she, at the end of that summer?

But as the man sits by the pond, his memories of that summer start to coalesce, and in particular his memories of Lettie, her mother Mrs Hempstock, and her mother old Mrs Hempstock, who can remember a long, long way back. As she said: Back in the old King's day there were those who'd ride for a week to buy a round of my cheese. They said that the King himself had it with his bread, and his boys, Prince Dickon and Prince Geoffrey and even little Prince John. - so that would be the twelfth century then. And he remembers the true events of that summer, when something that should have been asleep was stirred up and elements of another world intruded into our own. And, seen through the eyes of a seven year old boy, the events of the summer are truly terrifying.

Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member riverwillow
‘Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.’ This also applies to Neil Gaiman’s books, you can read the blurb, look at the cover art, read reviews and summaries but nothing will prepare
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you for what lies within the pages.

This is a fairy-story for all, about discovering what really is at the end of the lane, and about what happens when you grow up:

‘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 that there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.’ She thought for a moment. Then she smiled. ‘Except for Granny of course.’
We sat there side by side, on the old wooden bench, not saying anything. I thought about adults. I wondered if this was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children’s books hidden in the middle of dull, long books. The kind with no pictures or conversations.’


I could tell you more, about how the book starts with the adult protagonist doing the most grown-up of grown-up things, attending a funeral, and how seeking to clear his head he drives to the site of his old, long-gone, childhood home and how this stirs up memories of his childhood. But all I will say is that this is one of the best, if not the best, book that I’ve read in a while, so read it and discover the complexities within for yourself.
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LibraryThing member varwenea
An intro instead of summary as it’s too easy to reveal the book: A divorced 40-something year old man goes back to his hometown to attend a funeral alone. In a moment of free time, he finds himself absentmindedly driving down the lane, to the home where memories swim back to him slowly as he
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takes his steps. The story then switches to his 7 year old self, when the incident took place. The finale is bookended with the 40+ year old self again.

Confession: Unlike most other readers, I did not know a thing about Gaiman.
Lesson learned: A person should at least research/read about the theme/tone/genre of a book before buying a book.

Am I disappointed? No. Am I impressed? No. Do I recommend it? Not particularly; I would need to explain it. Why? It straddles multiple category of books, not quite hitting a homerun in any of them. It’s likely too depressing, sad, and scary for children. It’s passable as a YA book, but I don’t see the appeal of the look back from a 40 something divorced and frankly emotionally lost man. It’s a fantastical story without sufficient depth and clarity to be a Sci Fic book. It’s an adult novella that one can read through in a few hours without necessarily feeling an emotional foot print afterwards, except perhaps some sadness for frankly most of the characters. Should I try to read more into it? To interpret – If only he didn’t let go of her hand, NONE of this would have happened – as an allegory of how one action in time will forever change the landscape of you and those around you. I suppose I could, but the book didn’t have this emphasis, nor was the unnamed narrator kid/man supposed to remember any of this. One can say it addresses a litany of childhood fears, but this book didn’t attempt to resolve them or give one peace or acceptance for them. It just is.

In short, a simplistically written, relatively fun page-turner that didn’t wow me as much as I wanted to be wowed. I do thank Gaiman for giving me a heroine to cheer for: Lettie Hempstock – the 11 year old protector of the 7 year old narrator.

Some Quotes:

On Death:
From Lettie: “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…”
On Grandmothers – I wish I had a loving grandmother growing up:
“She sat down in a rocking chair on the other side of the fire, and rocked gently, not looking at me.
I felt safe. It was as if the essence of grandmotherliness had been condensed into that one place, that one time.”

On People – inside vs. outside:
From Lettie: “Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”

On Crying – crying alone really does suck:
“… Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them.”

On Father and Son:
“I finally made friends with my father when I entered my twenties. We had so little in common when I was a boy, and I am certain I had been a disappointment to him. He did not ask for a child with a book, off in its own world. He wanted a son who did what he had done: swam and boxed and played rugby, and drove cars at speed with abandon and joy, but that was not what he had wound up with.”
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LibraryThing member stacy_chambers
Some books become things you carry around inside of you. For me, this is one of those books.
LibraryThing member fyrefly98
Summary: When our narrator returns to his childhood home to attend a funereal, he finds himself inexplicably drawn towards the house at the end of the lane. The old woman that lives there lets him go sit out by the pond, and as he does, he remembers a disturbing episode from his childhood. It
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started with a boarder in his parents house who committed suicide in his car, which unleashes some dark and ancient power into our young narrator's life. He's taken into the protection of Lettie Hempstock, the eleven-year-old girl (or so she says), who lives with her mother and grandmother in the old farmhouse with the pond, which Lettie insists is an ocean. But will Lettie - as strong and as strange and as brave as she as she is - be strong enough to drive away the darkness which has invaded even the places and people he thought would always be safe?

Review: This book was lovely and haunting and so, so very Gaiman-ish. Like if you'd taken all of Gaiman's work and distilled it down to its essence, you'd have this book. The ideas that there are power out there, powers that are greater and more terrible that we can imagine, and they're always there, a half-degree turn away from reality. That stories are a way of trying to understand and deal with the effects when those powers touch our world, and our lives. That your perception is not reality, it's just a story you tell yourself, but that makes it more powerful, not less. I feel like I have come across these ideas from Gaiman over and over again, but rather then feeling stale, something about the way he uses them in service of this story makes them purer and more concentrated, and they packed a heck of a wallop. The characters all felt familiar, not like I knew them, but like I'd met them before wearing other faces, other guises, other angles in which the world of the Hempstocks has touched ours. (Again, very Gaiman-y: a lot of playing around with archetypes and mythology.) And so, even though Gaiman's never big on explaining how his fantasy realm works, what the rules are, which has bugged me in the past, in this case he almost doesn't need to; the way things work makes sense because that's the way things have always worked, and some inner part of you has known it all along. And there are some sweet and touching moments, but there are also some truly scary moments, with most of the worst ones not being fantasy elements at all, but the real darkness that is always lurking, right out of the corner of your eye. In fact, the scenes where the fantasy elements were the strongest, the scenes in the other reality, were some of my least favorite, since they seemed the most descriptive and somehow the least resonant. But overall, a lovely and haunting little book to get lost in on a fall afternoon. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Definitely recommended. It's got a dark fairy tale - or maybe fable is the better term - feeling to it, like a modern myth, and recommended to anyone who wants a reminder that our world, even as children, is not all sweetness and light (but still contains courage and goodness and strength, even facing the dark.)
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LibraryThing member flying_monkeys
Rating: 4.5 of 5

Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller who conjures vivid imagery and instantly believable worlds with so few words that, when finished with one of his stories, I'm left in a euphoric mixture of wonder and contentment.

What I loved most about The Ocean at the End of the Lane?

Without a
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doubt the Hempstock women and the seamless blend of two worlds.

A few of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don't. I don't. People are much more complicated than that. It's true of everybody (p. 112)."

"Children, as I have said, use back ways and hidden paths, while adults take roads and official paths (p.113)."

"I wished I could have seen who was talking. If you have something specific and visible to fear, rather than something that could be anything, it is easier (p. 138)."
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LibraryThing member bragan
This is a short fantasy novel about a seven-year-old boy, and the women down the road from him who are clearly more than ordinary humans, and a monster who follows the kid home from elsewhere and infiltrates his family... and that description does not remotely do it justice. It's a beautifully
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written, devour-it-in-one-sitting book that's genuinely scary, but also full of wonder and half-glimpsed mysteries and poignant emotional truths. Not to mention a young protagonist I can identify with incredibly well. Partly that's because he's exactly the kind of bookish child I was (and still am, inside my adult self). But it's also because Gaiman clearly remembers what it's like to be a child -- not childhood as filtered through our adult perspectives, or as it's presented to us in children's books, but the full, complex reality of it -- and he makes me remember what it was like, too, and wonder how I ever forgot.

Gaiman's written some amazing stuff, and while I think the Sandman comic series is still his most impressive achievement, this is my new favorite among his novels.
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LibraryThing member scifi_jon
Before I read this book I read that it was a story of a boy finding himself, a coming of age tale. It's something different.
This book entertained me like no other. It entertained me like the books I read when I was a small boy. At that time books were uncomplicated and fascinating. They were things
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to read because I loved to read them, they took me away to faraway places and made me dream of bigger things of things that would never be but if things that were wonderful. This book did exactly that. I was brought back to my childhood when I read because I wanted nothing more than to be entertained.
It is a magical book that is so much fairytale that it will be remembered forever.
Absolutely wonderful and I enjoyed every second of reading it. It's a book I will pass down to my daughter.
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LibraryThing member ForeverMasterless
Neil Gaiman holds a close place in my heart. He is, perhaps, my first "favorite author."

Before him I had read The Dresden Files and Narnia, but those aren't favorite authors, those are favorite series, I would think to myself.

So, when I heard about this book I, naturally, preordered it immediately
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and proceeded to foam at the mouth with anticipation until amazon delivered it to my doorstep several months later.

My first thought on opening the package was, "Wow, this is a really tiny book."

I started reading. By the end of chapter one, I was crying my eyes out. Neil Gaiman is the only author, it seems, who can make me cry because something is sad. It's not hard to make me cry, if you know how. I cry at exceptionally inspirational things, not sad things, that's all. Except when I'm reading a Neil Gaiman book.

What followed was a rather frustrating three days where all I wanted to do was sit down and finish this book in one sitting, but couldn't, due to external factors. First I had a surprise change to my work schedule. Then I discovered mold eating away at my bedroom carpet and had to tear it all up. Then I got the worst migraine I've had since I was twelve years old, most likely due to the mold that I had rudely disturbed. Right now I sit, having just finished this book, still recovering from the end of my migraine. I powered through even though it was hard to focus on anything with my eyes.

It was worth it.

This is Gaiman's most personal story, and it shows. It's written in first person, which is unusual for Gaiman, as all of his novels are written in third (although many of his short stories are written in first).

As an uber fan I know how important the Narnia boxed-set was to Gaiman's childhood. That makes an appearance here. The protagonist is, very obviously, a mini-Gaiman. Book-obsessed. Poem reciting. Uncommonly genuine.

The story is one of childhood memories long forgot, and it's done really, really well. That's all I feel comfortable saying. If you like Gaiman at all, just go read it. It's one of his best.
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LibraryThing member krau0098
I was dying to read this book. So I bought it the day it came out and instantly sat down and read it. It was a spectacular read with a dark fairy tale vibe to it and a very nostalgic atmosphere.

The book starts with our nameless main character who is a middle aged man who has journeyed back to his
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childhood town for a funeral. Once there he journeys to the Hempstock farm and starts to remember strange things about his childhood that he has long forgotten. Thus starts the tale of a seven year boy and a magical girl named Lettie Hempstock who believes the duck pond behind her house is an ocean.

Spectacular read with a dark fairy tale/folklorish vibe to it. I enjoyed it a lot. This book is very atmospheric, full of subtle magic, and a bit creepy.

As normal Gaiman does an excellent job with imagery and really makes the world and time come alive for his readers. The majority of the book is told from a child’s perspective and as such the story has a very childlike quality to it. The narrator doesn’t see things like an adult would and tends to simplify certain problems while still being able to accept a world beyond his imagination.

We are introduced to a world that is both nostalgic and eerily magical. There are monsters that dwell here and monsters that prey on those monsters. There are strangely sympathetic cats, little girls that are old, and ponds that are really oceans. It is a magical place that lies within and near our world. It is also a dark and scary place but not without it’s light.

The book mainly emphasis the power and importance of story and the quest of one adult to follow his nostalgia and unravel the mysteries that surround it.

This book would probably be appropriate for young adults, but not for younger readers. The monsters are way to creepy for younger readers, they were enough to give me nightmares. As well there is a scene where the narrator’s father is intimately involved with another woman (which the narrator as a child doesn’t understand). There was also a scene where the narrator digs a gigantic worm out of his foot that really grossed me out...

The story wraps up in a way that is full of irony and will make you chuckle a bit as a reader. It is also a bit sad and melancholy. It’s the type of story you think back to and wonder at. Definitely something I will read again at some point.

Overall I thought this was a spectaular read. I loved the dark fairy tale feel to it, the way childhood wonder and nostalgia are portrayed, and the absolutely terrifying monsters that the narrator encounters. Gaiman has a created a story full of the wonder of childhood, the terror of things that bump in the night, and the magicallness of it all. This is a wondrous story that I recommend everyone read.
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LibraryThing member Great_East_Road
See my review of this book, and many more, at Tales from the Great East Road.

What makes us who we are? How much of ourselves is created by our memories? When a forty year old man returns to his childhood village for a funeral he rediscovers the home of an old friend, Lettie Hempstock, who believed
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the pond in her back garden was actually an ocean. As he explores Hempstock Farm, he finds memories, hidden inside his mind, unfolding and revealing a battle with a monster from another world when he was just seven years old.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is both a strange and beautiful novel. It manages to portray grand ideas and themes, such as memories and the changes we all go through from childhood to adult, on a small, almost isolated scale. The whole novel has a sense of being only a small part of the bigger picture, leaving a feeling of being almost uncompleted. This mirrors beautifully the unnamed narrator's situation - as a child he never fully understands what is happening to him, since adults often don't explain themselves to children in a possibly misguided belief that they won't understand. As an adult, however, he still doesn't see exactly what has happened as he realises that he has forgotten his adventure until he visits Hempstock Farm.

The narrator is a very sympathetic character. He is a lonely young boy who feels isolated and struggles to communicate with his family. The monster, disguised as Ursula Monkton, who infiltrates his family pushes him away from them even further, and the fact that the family never realise her true nature makes it even sadder. The young boy has to live with the trauma caused by her manipulation of his father, which is never resolved or even addressed, as no-one else remembers what happened. This brings up the question as to whether the whole novel is in fact the narrator's way of dealing with this trauma, a fantasy conjured up because he couldn't face what had actually happened and no-one else knew or talked about it.

The Hempstock women - Lettie, Mrs Hempstock, and Old Mrs Hempstock - are another part of the mystery in this novel. Reminiscent of the Pagan Maiden, Mother, and Crone, they are magical and mysterious, but again, never fully explained. As a child, the narrator barely questions them and is satisfied with the vague answers he gets. Who are these women exactly? How old are they, and are they immortal? What exactly is the Ocean in their garden?

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a beautifully written, dream-like novel that captures the imagination throughout - but ultimately leaves a feeling of being incomplete. Whilst it does create a sense of nostalgia, a lingering feeling of quiet sadness stayed with me many days after finishing the book - and I believe that this shows Neil Gaiman's great skill as a writer.

4 stars
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LibraryThing member heaven_star
This was a lovely, lovely thing. I don't know that I loved it as hard as some others did, but I think it's going to stick with me.

It started slow, it's one of the few direct criticisms of the book I have. I get that it was a slow build where you don't quite know where reality left off but you're
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certainly no longer there and it's sort of wonderful, but at the same time it was slow and I'm not going to say otherwise. I don't know whether I'd have cut it, because it does provide that wonderful, casual trip over the line into fantasy eventually, but it could perhaps have been shortened.

The balance of fantasy-tinged reality is gorgeous, right up to the end. I sat back and had this lovely glow of "did that happen? I think it could have". It's the best kind of urban-ish fantasy - where there's a thin glaze of fantasy over the real world and if you squint you think you can see through it.

The characters were incredible. Honest, dark, courageous and bright. Gaiman-style. I've never seen a child's perspective so perfectly rendered - the simplistic views of things, the acceptance of things adults would challenge or scoff at ("I just thought that maybe sometimes people got worms in their feet.") and the immense, irrefutable power of adults. Even when they're horrible. You can't see that they're horrible when you're a kid, it's just sort of a thing you bear without objectivity or insight. It's heartbreaking and real what Gaiman presents here. The villains are villainous, twisted truly scary. Lettie Hempstock is what every little girl (or grown up!) should have as her role model - plucky, self-assured and fully in command of her own power without being cruel or arrogant.

The concept's he's playing with here are huge, too. His take on things like a child's view of death, what the universe looks like and the way he never quite lets on exactly what the Hempstocks are is incredible. I's the best sort of unanswered question.

The audiobook is narrated by Gaiman himself and he's talented at it! He does a variety of women's voices and men's really well and his pacing is perfect.

You know, thinking it through in this review I'm bumping my rating. This book was deceptively deep and thoughtful, beatiful and fragile. It's short but it's also exactly the right length. It's genius.
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Awards

Nebula Award (Nominee — Novel — 2013)
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2015)
Audie Award (Finalist — 2014)
Locus Award (Finalist — Fantasy Novel — 2014)
Mythopoeic Awards (Finalist — Adult Literature — 2014)
World Fantasy Award (Nominee — Novel — 2014)
Not the Booker Prize (Shortlist — 2013)
Nutmeg Book Award (Nominee — High School — 2016)
British Fantasy Award (Nominee — Robert Holdstock Award — 2014)
British Book Award (Shortlist — Audiobook — 2013)
Maine Readers' Choice Award (Longlist — 2014)
Volunteer State Book Award (Nominee — High School — 2016)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Science Fiction and Fantasy — 2013)
RUSA CODES Listen List (Selection — 2014)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2013-06-18

Physical description

181 p.; 5.1 x 0.7 inches

ISBN

0062255657 / 9780062255655
Page: 7.247 seconds