The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman’s award-winning 2013 novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane feels like a combination of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and The Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Using vivid imagery and rich allegories, Gaiman creates a story that is part parable, part fantasy, and part psychological portrait. This short engaging novel challenges readers to contemplate and interpret the events described.

On one level the book is straightforward: a nameless middle-aged man returns to his hometown of Sussex, England to speak at a funeral. After the funeral, he finds himself in the home of his only childhood friend, Lettie Hemstock. His initial memories are vague. “But standing in the hallway, it was all coming back to me. Memories were waiting on the edge of things beckoning to me. Had you told me I was seven again, I might have half-believed you, for a moment.”

His seven-year old self narrates the bulk of the book and many possible interpretations emerge. First, his beloved cat is killed and then the family’s boarder kills himself. Soon after, his mother return to work and a new boarder, Ursala Monkton, arrives to care for the young boy and his sister. The woman is cruel and mean. When the boy then shows disrespect toward Ursala, the boy’s father submerges the boy in the bathtub. Soon he sees his father and Ursula kissing in the living room. The culmination of these occurrences leads the boy to feel that an evil spell has been cast upon him. The innocence of this lonely, thoughtful child is shattered.

Scary and spooky phenomenon begin to occur and the seven-year old boy feels frightened. The story combines actual life incidents with supernatural battles between good and evil creatures. Is this precocious boy dreaming? Did all these events occur? Or is he creating narratives in his head to defend against his new knowledge of cruelty, adultery, and death?

As kids grow up, they make sense of confusing or traumatic incidents by creating narratives that mix fact and fiction. Fuzzy images and events from childhood can lurk within. The unconscious can repress memories until a child is ready to confront the event or feeling. As the narrator describes beautifully, “Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”

Lettie Hemstock tells the young boy, “Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”

This realization illuminates and disappoints the boy as it suggests the judgment of adults is not to be trusted, but at least Lettie's comment corroborates his recent experiences. Gaiman’s perceptive novel penetrates this complex process of maturation and engenders empathy and understanding.