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A review by writervid
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
4.0
Some stray thoughts:
-Another Goodreads reviewer stated that this was the book you read when you started to forget what it was to be a kid. I don't think I'm there yet.
-The most recent time I heard of this was of a production of it (I want to say in the Public Theatre, but honestly I might just be projecting), and while I was reading this, I could NOT stop thinking about how it could be staged. Imagine a jungle-gym like stage, but only from certain angles, or a special on the boy's foot when the worm gets embedded in there, or using the aisles in the theatre to run around when running from the varmints. It could be SO GOOD and now I really want to see the production.
-Miss Monkton is truly the most horrifying villain I've read in a while.
-I LOVE the maiden/mother/crone archetype.
-I love Lettie.
-The third act, when the varmints came in, felt almost like the stakes had been lessened because of that. Obviously they weren't on the physical level, but on the personal level of "she's destroying my life"? Yeah, they were.
-There is something inherently fairytale-like about this story. It just feels like a lot of things. I spent a lot of it thinking "how could he forget all this?" only to realize (sadly) at the end...oh.
-Sometimes I just don't connect to Neil Gaiman's writing style? I always love the stories he tells more than the style he tells it in.
-Another Goodreads reviewer stated that this was the book you read when you started to forget what it was to be a kid. I don't think I'm there yet.
-The most recent time I heard of this was of a production of it (I want to say in the Public Theatre, but honestly I might just be projecting), and while I was reading this, I could NOT stop thinking about how it could be staged. Imagine a jungle-gym like stage, but only from certain angles, or a special on the boy's foot when the worm gets embedded in there, or using the aisles in the theatre to run around when running from the varmints. It could be SO GOOD and now I really want to see the production.
-Miss Monkton is truly the most horrifying villain I've read in a while.
-I LOVE the maiden/mother/crone archetype.
-I love Lettie.
-The third act, when the varmints came in, felt almost like the stakes had been lessened because of that. Obviously they weren't on the physical level, but on the personal level of "she's destroying my life"? Yeah, they were.
-There is something inherently fairytale-like about this story. It just feels like a lot of things. I spent a lot of it thinking "how could he forget all this?" only to realize (sadly) at the end...oh.
-Sometimes I just don't connect to Neil Gaiman's writing style? I always love the stories he tells more than the style he tells it in.