Neil Gaiman- The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The fantastical world coexists with our mundane reality in The Ocean at the End of the Lane: the fabric of time can be snipped and mended by an immortal grandmother; wormholes to other realities can manifest themselves in your heart; a duck pond can be an ocean of understanding. And while this tale is undoubtedly a fantasy short novel, the narration really boils down to a coming of age story about a boy who is trying to find ways to cope with hardship. The unnamed protagonist faces death multiple times over a very short amount of time and begins to experience strange phenomena, such as waking up with a coin stuck in his throat. His friendly, magical neighbors down the lane explain these oddities without ever really giving him answers. Or, at least, their answers make sense for the world as they see it. The Hempstocks don’t exist as contemporary manifestations of myth but rather exist to aid and control the magic already at work within the universe.

What I enjoy most about the genre is the tendency to narrate through the eyes of children. The Ocean at the End of the Lane begins with an adult protagonist facing a funeral and only when he is presented to the “ocean” does he begin to remember his childhood. It could be argued that the Hempstocks may have altered his memories, as they’ve done with others. Or it could be argued that the reality of his past may not have had these fantastical elements and instead been the imagination of a boy questioning and trying to understand the adult world. He loses a friend in his cat and then is exposed to the corpse of suicide. He questions the desire for wealth and struggles to understand the presence of a beautiful woman who has come to break apart his family by seducing his father. Death, greed, and sex all play important roles in adult life and as a growing young boy he decides to look for answers. Lettie and the Hempstocks have the existential knowledge of everything in their backyard and even they know some things are best kept a mystery. The entire novel is a taste of magic in a modern setting, and we are all left wondering how and why memories can change and if the way we view adult life is worth sacrificing childhood.