The Ocean at the End of the Lane: Commentary and Review

I am not accustomed to doing book reviews, and unless I have something really serious to say about an issue, I think it's more fun to read a discussion of themes and greater connections rather than a review, so I am going to attempt to do that. There will be minor spoilers. You may not have the same definition of "minor" that I do, so proceed with caution. (If you want to know what I think quality-wise, it's this: read it. I loved it.)

[I should also note that this has been saved as a draft for a while, and since then I've read more Sandman and American Gods.]

Before this, the only Neil Gaiman book I had read was The Graveyard Book several years ago, though I also had read the first few issues of Sandman at this point and see his Doctor Who episodes. I was interested in beginning to delve more into his work with this book because it appeared to be a nice childhood tale of nostalgia...and boy, how was I wrong. It morphed into something all the more terrifying and thrilling.

The plot began to sound mystic, and suddenly it was full-blown, gloriously unexplained fantasy. Perhaps only Gaiman can get away with it, but I envy how he leaves so much vague and unexplained, really allowing it to be magical and imaginative. It's a balance I've struggled with my own writing, as I feel like I should explain how everything works with the Internet's tendency to scrutinize everything, but this ends up being fruitless for fantasy.

Anyway, perhaps the most memorable and disturbing part in the book for me was when the protagonist notices there is a hole in his foot, decides it's not worth his parents' attention, and grabs tweezers and pulls out a worm and washes it down the bathtub drain. I'm not sure what bothered me more: the fact that there was a worm in his foot, or that he was completely unphased by it. I know my brother would have been screaming when he was seven.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is full of childhood but timeless horror, and in addition to the genre I find the target age range interesting. Despite being through the eyes of a seven-year-old, Gaiman stated he decided to not market it toward younger readers because there is not enough hope, and I suppose I would have to agree, though there is hardly anything adult, never mind on the scale of American Gods. Ultimately, though, this decision resulted in the novel being more sophisticated in writing style (Coraline seemed to me to be very obviously written for kids) and deal with some dark themes, and there are many of those. The first chapter sees his cat being run over; the second, a man committing suicide; and the third, nearly choking to death. Rather than a child's story, it's a child in the adult world.

Something else that intrigued me was that the narrator is never given a name. But it's not just him, it's all the human characters: there's just "my sister," "the opal miner," etc. It's the otherworldly characters that have names, and appropriately unique and mythological ones at that. This seems to be a theme in Gaiman's work (just look at Shadow!): names are nebulous things, especially for ordinary people, but can be used to great effect in displaying the scope and size of fantastical characters.

The ending is a twist and a little bit ambiguous. It may be tragic, but it's the kind I prefer: [SPOILERS] memory issues. Not a definitive wipe, but something quieter, and it's exactly the kind of thing I love.

Blending childhood adventure with horror, mystery, and darkness, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a treat, clocking in at just under 200 pages...but one that I devoured slowly, wishing to stay immersed in its grand scope for longer.