You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
Another re-read before I go see the show. Still holds up, still makes me cry, still makes me wonder what could have been
This is, like all of Gaiman's work, original and gorgeously written and by turns terrifying and funny.
No spoilers, a magical tale that will be enjoyed by any fan of Gaiman. Peculiar (of course, it's Gaiman) and fantastical it also remains solidly in the world of the seven year old boy protagonist. It is a memory so we know what he does with some interjection from his adult self. Anyone able to read without having all the answers will love it, young or old. Suspend what you believe reality to be and enjoy; I read it in one sitting as the tea in the pot went cold, undrunk.
I went into reading this remembering that Gaiman and the publisher didn’t want this to be classified as a fantasy. Pff, whatever. I thought it was beautifully written and my only complaint is that I wanted to know more-I wanted to understand the Hempstock family more but as soon as I let that go-the story just washed over me and I think that is the point. Simply magical.
If magic is real-- and I am not saying for certain it is or it is not-- Neil Gaiman would write it. And if that magic was about a childhood, and the power stories have to grow along with that child, what Neil Gaiman would write would be "The Ocean at the End of the Lane."'
There is much said in this short space of a novel, and much that is left unsaid. Our nameless narrator, returning home, to the lands of his youth, for a funeral of an untold person, takes us-- quite literally-- through memory and down the lane to his childhood. A time of reading and retreating and death and friendship and love. "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 chilhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good." (5) It isn't easy to come to feel for and love a character in a novel, and is more difficult yet to accomplish in a novel short as this. Gaiman does so and more with no seeming effort, swiftly, as we come to know the boy who's name we do not know, who had "Nobody [come] to [his] seventh birthday party." (9) and who believes from a young age that "Books were safer than other people anyway." (9) A series of traumatizing events lead our narrator through the loss of his cat, the witness of his family's border's suicide, and to the house at the end of his lane, to a friend he will make. Lettie Hempstock-- that friend-- dare I say has an instant place of prominence in the world literary canon; this older girl who knows the ways of the world, and that those ways are a kind of magic, and understands the stories of the wild, along with two older generations of her family's women.
A story about stories, and the power within stories, Gaiman employs some of his most beautiful prose to comment on the things of childhood, of all life, and the ways to use stories to confront them. "'Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't [...] monsters are scared,' said Lettie. 'That's why they're monsters.'" (112) And these comments, out of the mouths of children like Lettie, are why I read.
There is a great beauty at work here in this novel, of stories and their redemptive powers. As our narrator ages, to the point of an adult, he returns time and again to these people of his stories, after having seemingly forgotten them. Returning to a place and time when they are real. These people, these stories, which have the power to save a life and to redeem-- this beautifully quirky trinity of women, who are willing to lay down their lives so that you may be saved, and live-- these people who, beyond all reality are very real. Feelings, stories and people like Neil Gaiman has breathed into life here are why I read, and why I consider Gaiaman one of my favorite writers working today. Life does not always accomodate rereading novels, when there are so many out there still to be read-- but I will visit the tale of this boy and his friend Lettie, and come to the ocean, again.
There is much said in this short space of a novel, and much that is left unsaid. Our nameless narrator, returning home, to the lands of his youth, for a funeral of an untold person, takes us-- quite literally-- through memory and down the lane to his childhood. A time of reading and retreating and death and friendship and love. "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 chilhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good." (5) It isn't easy to come to feel for and love a character in a novel, and is more difficult yet to accomplish in a novel short as this. Gaiman does so and more with no seeming effort, swiftly, as we come to know the boy who's name we do not know, who had "Nobody [come] to [his] seventh birthday party." (9) and who believes from a young age that "Books were safer than other people anyway." (9) A series of traumatizing events lead our narrator through the loss of his cat, the witness of his family's border's suicide, and to the house at the end of his lane, to a friend he will make. Lettie Hempstock-- that friend-- dare I say has an instant place of prominence in the world literary canon; this older girl who knows the ways of the world, and that those ways are a kind of magic, and understands the stories of the wild, along with two older generations of her family's women.
A story about stories, and the power within stories, Gaiman employs some of his most beautiful prose to comment on the things of childhood, of all life, and the ways to use stories to confront them. "'Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't [...] monsters are scared,' said Lettie. 'That's why they're monsters.'" (112) And these comments, out of the mouths of children like Lettie, are why I read.
There is a great beauty at work here in this novel, of stories and their redemptive powers. As our narrator ages, to the point of an adult, he returns time and again to these people of his stories, after having seemingly forgotten them. Returning to a place and time when they are real. These people, these stories, which have the power to save a life and to redeem-- this beautifully quirky trinity of women, who are willing to lay down their lives so that you may be saved, and live-- these people who, beyond all reality are very real. Feelings, stories and people like Neil Gaiman has breathed into life here are why I read, and why I consider Gaiaman one of my favorite writers working today. Life does not always accomodate rereading novels, when there are so many out there still to be read-- but I will visit the tale of this boy and his friend Lettie, and come to the ocean, again.
Intermittent flashes of colourful childhood evocation, scattered amongst a lot of vagueness and characters espousing riddles that wish to appear cleverer and more profound than they really are. I respect the attempt at building a dark narrative out of a child’s voice, but I felt that more interesting thematic reflection was being missed out on by not employing a more omniscient narrator. Add to that the strangely adult sex scene, and it’s hard to tell who the book is for. Well, judging by the number of ratings, clearly a lot of people. Not me, though.
Not what I expected. It's small (170 pages) and sci-fi. Written cleanly, with no extra words and a beautiful ending.