The Ocean at the End of the Lane by: Neil Gaiman

 

There is something beautiful in a fairy tale.  They’re some of the first stories children are introduced to and despite Disney’s trend of toning them down, they are the first instance of horror, reflecting many of the horrors in the world.  The world is a place that children see through different eyes and it’s something that we seem to lose as we grow.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s exploration of the process of growing up and then reconnecting with one’s self in adulthood, the self being the initial self of childhood.  A man finds himself back near his childhood home for a funeral and revisits some of the horror he encountered there.  There is an old farmhouse nearby where a maiden, mother, and crone once lived, and the scars from what happened are lasting.  The narrator of the tale goes unnamed, which Gaiman uses to exemplify that this type of story is something that has happened to all of us.  Often main characters are meant as self-inserts, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a novel that does that more literally than most.  Everybody had experiences in childhood that were in some way distressing, with many having some form of childhood trauma.  This novel uses its fantastical elements to explore the effects of trauma, coated in language of losing one’s heart and having it grow back as you grow up, death being a journey to a far away country, and parental affairs as evil monsters coming to take away the world.

 

There is also a case to be made for The Ocean at the End of the Lane being a prime example of magical realism.  Magical realism is a subgenre of fantasy which isn’t commonly found in the English speaking world, the most prominent in the United States being the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and doesn’t have a precise definition.  It is a subgenre defined by including fantastical elements and contents being presented and perceived as completely normal.  The worm being extracted from the narrator’s foot, becoming a beautiful woman, and seducing the narrator’s father while eating the narrator’s heart are all elements of The Ocean at the End of the Lane that are presented without question.  Certainly, Gaiman is using metaphor, but the metaphor is presented as completely real with no further explanation as to how or why, it is just an element of the world that should be taken as fact.  It creates the fairy tale quality for something set in essentially the modern age, there isn’t a year given for when this story is set, but it is implied to be the 1970s and is in the UK.  This disconnect seeps atmosphere into The Ocean at the End of the Lane and it uses every page of its rather short page count to great effect with the story moving from beat to beat while presenting a rather dark story.  The inciting incident is wholly disconnected from the magical realism of the rest of the novel, it’s the suicide of a man who robbed the narrator’s family car, the inciting incident for the narrator’s trauma.

 

The book can only come highly recommended for someone wishing to explore themes of childhood and growing up in the harsh reality of a world masked behind the fantastical and magical.  There are moments where things just change because of those in tune with the universe that lingers once you finish it.  It’s an example of telling a quick story without dragging the pace down while still maintaining a slow burn of a story.  10/10.