Reviews

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

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feainnewedd's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

mkhare's review against another edition

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4.0

When I read Nail Gaiman books I seem to adore the first quarter, then start to get a bit lost in the second quarter before the last half of the book slowly pulls me back in for a triumphant end. This is definitely what happened here.

That being said, there was a particular sparkle in the writing of this book. There was something about the earnest acceptance of the fantastical events by the narrator, something about the tone created by a lack of contracted words outside of dialogue. It made reading this book (especially aloud) such a joy, and such a thrill. I feel as though if I were to re-read this, I would most surely up my rating, but for now I am settling on 4.25 stars.

This book also gave me warm, nostalgic flashbacks of reading Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series, and I am now very much looking forward to re-reading that series, this book, and also to discovering more of Gaiman's works.

midici's review against another edition

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5.0

"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."

This is my favourite Neil Gaiman book so far. It's as though he took all his intensity, his wonderful, vivid, haunting prose, and purpose, and stuffed it into as small a space as possible.

Children often know things that adults don't. They tend to lose those things as they grow, but every once in a while the mysteries of childhood come back to us. The boy in this novel meets a remarkable family: Lettie Hempstock, the eleven year old who walks between worlds, and banishes things that pass through, her mother Mrs. Hempstock, and Old Mrs. Hempstock ,her grandmother.

He revisits the Hempstock's farm as a middle age man and remembers, suddenly, the few days as a child when he first met the Hempstocks and all of the secrets of his childhood that surrounded that event.