Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

79 reviews

jefferz's review

dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Taking the reader back to the English countryside through the eyes of a seven year old boy, Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At the End of the Lane is an intriguing short novel that I’ve heard such strong opinions and feelings about. Part pseudo Grimm fairy tale, part dark fantasy escapism, Gaiman’s story reads almost like a fictional memoir as its unnamed adult narrator recalls a dark and strained period of his childhood. Much like how time bends and distorts events based on how they’re remembered, so too does the story as the narrator is faced with magical and otherworldly beings in the quiet English countryside. Perhaps the hype set too high an expectation or my impression of the book’s direction was misguided from the get-go (the plot was not what I was expecting), but I found myself wanting to like this book a lot more than I actually did. Despite finding the ambition respectable, I often felt mildly frustrated with the plot not connecting and was left feeling like it ultimately didn’t amount to much in the end. The presentation and writing was great but the actual content felt too abstract and random to leave much of an impression for me.

The main highlight of the novel is Gaiman’s effective juxtaposition of how events or people are seen and interpreted between children and adults. Starting with the narrator and his father’s discovery of a man who committed suicide in their stolen car, the story gradually leans towards a fantasy angle involving magic, monsters, and other worlds. Due to his young age as well as how much time has passed since the events occurred, you’re left wondering how much of the story was real (if any at all) or how much was a child’s imagination running wild while scared. I enjoyed reading this book from a critical reading standpoint (to a point), attempting to analyze and interpret how these different occurrences could’ve happened if they were instead experienced by an adult.

The prose is mostly functional and not overly lyrical, but has a frank, matter of fact character voice that I like that is occasionally quite poetic. I’ve seen a bunch of reviews criticizing that the narrator’s character is bland and the weakest element of the story. However, I personally thought it was well done and captured the nature of an introverted, book-loving shy child which served as a good foil to “neighbor” Lettie’s vibrance or really all of the Hemstock family’s contrasting dynamics. The prologue chapter featuring the narrator as a middle-aged adult perfectly sets the simple, yet reflective tone and is the hook that got me excited for the impending and highlighted darkness and commentary on what makes us human.

Unfortunately as the story progressed, I increasingly felt like I wasn’t going to get that. Perhaps I have darker standards than the norm or expected far worse based on reviews mentioning child abuse/neglect angle, but there’s really only one notable scene involving child abuse/violence and rest being familial discourse and drama. As the tense atmosphere grows, the story leans heavier into fantasy elements that feel sporadic and random. On one hand I understand that Gaiman is trying to capture the wild imagination and mind of a child. However the story leans into the unexplainable otherworldly angle so hard that I found it increasingly difficult to follow where the plot and themes were going. I previously reviewed Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun which was another novel that highlighted dark parental topics through the eyes of a child which I found very effective so I’m not against the concept, but the execution of this one felt messy and unfocused.

The metaphorical symbolism of what the narrator experienced grew fainter and fainter, particularly in the second half of the book when Lettie confronts the main antagonist of the story. The sequence felt unnecessarily drawn out (particularly everything involving the varmites after) to stretch the story out of the novella category and to add a call back to the book’s title. In my opinion, that entire run of 40 pages could’ve been cut entirely and all of the narrator’s great internalized fears manifested into reality could’ve been reworked into the confrontation with the main antagonist. And to be sure there were some great quotes, but they felt like a series of beautiful vignettes that were moving on their own while messy and vague when strung together. As the last few chapters ended, I was left baffled thinking “well that was something I guess”.

Despite being well-written and conceptually interesting, I felt like I missed something both from an emotional angle and a literary analysis angle. What started off tonally solid just grew more outlandish and abstract as it progressed and there’s frankly some very strange and bizarre choices that almost seem comedic, in direct contrast to the tone this book is going for. This is my first real Neil Gaiman read (I loved watching the adaptation of Good Omens and the very little I read of American gods years ago) and I can tell that nearly all my personal nitpicks with The Ocean At the End of the Lane has to do with the story and ideas, not Gaiman’s actual writing or style. Case and point, I loved the prologue and epilogue more than the rest of the book. My overall impression is that the book was quite messy and jarring, which somewhat makes sense after reading Gaiman’s acknowledgements covering the novel’s origin of a short story that was reworked and expanded to be a novel; the original short story synopsis sounded like it would’ve been much more to my taste with less distracting elements.

Content Warnings

amberacks12's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Written with Gaiman’s characteristic dreamlike prose, I really liked this one, as I do with most of his books (as long as the body horror isn’t too intense. This one for sure toed the line). I really loved the concept and the open ended way of explaining the world captured by this story. The visuals were beautiful as well! Certain moments with some of the creatures in this book just made me want to draw, and try and capture the ethereal way they were described.

Writing style: 5
Emotional impact: 4
Enjoyability: 4.5
=4.5

Content Warnings