The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman has probably had more of an impact on my brain and my writing than any other author. Selecting just one of his many incredible "dark and sad" books was a real challenge for me.

I settled on this one, in part because it is the perfect bookend to my previous recommendation, Doll Bones, in that it eloquently expresses the quiet joys, fears, and sorrows of childhood, as seen through the eyes of an adult who knows full well the meaning of loss, and the cost of things we can barely recognize, much less understand, when we are… show more.

Something about the cover called to me from an airport bookshelf—I just knew it was about grief.

Using the reminisce of a 40-year-old attending a funeral, this story illustrates the strangeness of human connection and its unassuming power. Much of the book is a mourning of lost memory, lost friendships, and lost innocence as time has carried the boy he was to the unfamiliar, sterile territory of middle age.

He had somehow forgotten encountering otherworldly evil and watching horrors unfold around him. He’d nearly lost his life. Apart from the sacrifice of one special someone, his story would have ended… show more.

Neil Gaiman has such a unique story-telling voice. It’s simply magical.

I first read The Ocean at the End of the Lane not long after it was published back in 2014 and fell in love with it. I knew it would forever remain one of my favourite reads. Since then I have re-read it, and also listened on several occasions to the audio version, which Neil himself narrates.

I highly recommend you do the same. This is a story about the confinement of being a child in an adult world. It is also a tale that insists we never lose… show more.

Gaiman has received a lot of acclaim for a lot of his books, and one of the stories most commonly left in his more famous works’ shadows is The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

What I love about this book is that the story spans across a lifetime. I tend to get so focused on the here and now that I sometimes forget that the past, present, and future are all a part of the same great big tapestry.

What I did yesterday impacts who I am today, and the choices I make today affect who I’ll… show more.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane speaks to me about my need to reclaim in adulthood some of the magic from my childhood. It’s told from the perspective of an adult character, a broken man, never named, looking back on his childhood. Memories come back upon returning to his childhood home. While realizing some hard truths about his upbringing, he also remembers the real magic he experienced with a childhood friend. Recalling that the pond in his rural neighborhood had the actual ability to become an ocean, he learns that hard truths and magic are not mutually exclusive,… show more.

This novel(ette) does what so many others endeavor to and it does it in droves. Gaiman wields the fabric of mythology to craft a supernatural suspense/contemporary fantast story that envelopes the reader and draws us into two worlds. We all feel as though there is something living just beyond our perceptions and Gaiman harnesses that to drive a wildly enticing, and, at times, terrifying, story about a boy unwittingly wrapped in the winds of fate. The mundane is pushed aside for the fantastic and I would give just about anything to read this story again for the very first time. 

The main character is an introverted young boy whose family struggles in his impoverished neighborhood, and he meets an older girl who shares the existence of a local “hellmouth” that she tames using intuitive magic. This book echoes why I’m a diehard Buffy the Vampire Slayer (television show) fan—it takes reality and adds a vortex of supernatural to the already difficult experience of growing up. Gaiman masterfully tells an emotional story, amplifying the feelings of safety and anxiety young people experience as they navigate their need to belong, decipher life, and deal with the family they’re born into. Only 171… show more.

I was first introduced to this version of the book, long after having read and loved the original and unillustrated version, when Gaiman and Hurst hosted a talk about it in London several years ago. Hurst’s whirling, swirling black and white illustrations are a perfect accompaniment to Gaiman’s similarly whirling, swirling tale, adding another layer of dreamlike unreality. Unlike many illustrated versions of previously released books which feature only a handful of illustrations, this book is absolutely permeated with them, giving the reader something new to marvel over constantly.

Neil Gaiman is one of the most unique wordsmiths of our time and a truly imaginative storyteller. This short novel, like all his work, takes the reader down a dark, fantastical path, painting each page with immersive imagery. Every word is meaningful and essential, and this is my own philosophy on what’s required of poetic prose. Adults are content walking the same path, hundreds of times, thousands, as the story intones, but there is so much beauty and joy to be found on this particular journey, both melancholy and magical. It is perhaps the perfect story and full of life… show more.

A middle-aged man, adrift in life, returns to his childhood home to center himself and reminisce about the strange events once encountered by his 7-year-old self. The story takes place in an isolated English countryside rife with the gentle melancholy of nostalgia. But within its depths lies absolute terror.

“Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters.”

Initially written as a short story, it expanded into a novella, as stories are wont to do when they have so much more to say. Gaiman is a master at using magical realism to balance fantasy and horror.