The
Ocean at the End of the Lane
by
Neil Gaiman
I
listened to Neil Gaiman read this book some weeks ago on audio CD and it was
brilliant! The other day I received the hard copy so I could write this review
and stared at it in shock. This is a
very small book, but it certainly didn’t seem that way when I listened to
it. (Okay, then I listened to it again.)
It’s only 178 pages, probably somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words.
That
seems particularly appropriate as we are in the midst of National Novel Writing
Month (NaNoWriMo) where the goal is to write 50,000 words in one month. Here is
an example of something of that length.
It makes me wonder how many words were in the first draft, whether it
was longer and edited down or shorter and added to in the rewriting and editing
phase. Yes, I’m still getting over my shock.
It does not read like such a small book.
It is very much a big book.
The
story begins with the narrator returning to visit his childhood home on the day
of a funeral.
“I
had done my duty in the morning, spoken the words I was meant to speak, and I
meant them as I spoke them…”
I
don’t think the author ever directly tells us who the funeral is for. I
surmised that it was for the father but we never really know for certain.
Then
we move back into the main part of the story, a remembrance of things past,
when the narrator was but a little boy of seven or so. The vocabulary is
somewhat advanced for the age of the main protagonist but perhaps not for a
bookish child, as we find out right off.
“…
the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake
before, that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first
book.”
When
no other children arrive for the party, he goes upstairs to read his new set of
Narnia books.
It is
is not exactly what I would call a horror book though there are horrors, all
the more sinister and horrible for how close to home they are. It reminds me
most of the Madeleine L’Engle fantasy books I read in my middle school years,
though a bit more adult. The good witches come in threes, just like the three
witches in A Wind in the Door.
The
setting is so well realized – the author never overdoes the details but each
detail adds to the suburban/rural setting with a large yard and garden, perhaps
a bit overgrown, goldenrod and heather growing where they please, and a small
farm down the lane.
It’s
the perfect tale for a cold fall day or a dark winter’s night. It’s a fairy
tale and a bit of a horror story and all too real in places. When you get to
the end, you might just find yourself going back and reading it again, like I
did.
