Customer Reviews

The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Unabridged)

As a big Neil Gaiman fan, it pains my to say this, but if I were to sum this book up in one word, it would be "underwhelming." Or possibly "underdeveloped."

Don't get me wrong, it's by no means awful, and there are a few very good things about it. It's just that it's not a patch on most of the rest of his work and if it was my first exposure to this usually brilliant author, I don't think I'd be in a particular rush to try another of his books. It's definitely more reminiscent of the fairly homely Coraline than the epic American Gods or Sandman series.

First, the good. The prose is inevitably lovely. Gaiman surely has one of the best styles of anyone writing in genre fiction. The sense of creepiness, even terror, is wonderfully created. Parts of the book I found as psychologically terrifying as the most full-blown horror novel. Without giving too much away, there's a section where the narrator is trying to leave his house to get help and is constantly foiled which is just a masterclass in ratcheting up the tension.

To some degree, he also creates a good sense of time and place (rural Britain in the seventies) but I thought this could have been developed further. I got the impression that the story could have taken place anywhere and would have enjoyed a bit more linking to local myths and landmarks, in the way you get with Alan Garner or Susan Cooper, or to seventies issues, like in The Rotters' Club or Black Swan Green.

The book apparently started life as a short story and it really shows. Partly, this is a simple length issue. It can't have been more than about 60 000 words and while sometimes short novels can work (the Great Gatsby is this sort of length and an undisputed classic) in this instance I felt it was over before I'd really had time to bond with the characters.

One of Gaiman's greatest strengths is his ability to weave myths and folklore into his stories, but here, the mythos felt oddly superficial. I didn't quite get what the Hempstocks were meant to be (other than yet another example of the Mother/Maiden/Crone concept) or why, if they were as powerful as they seemed, they were living quietly on a Sussex farm. I'd loved to have had more of their backstory and perhaps a bit of their point of view. Having come up with what appeared to be fascinating and original characters, they are horribly underused, and I felt the same to a lesser extent about the two supernatural enemies.

In conclusion, this is definitely worth a read, but if you're a Gaiman fan, maybe adjust your expectations downwards a little and if you've never read him before, start with another book or you might wonder what all the fuss is about. It's an entertaining, well-written and scary read but it's lacking the substance that would elevate it above that. If nothing else, I'd wait for the paperback to come out and the price to drop as it's far too short to justify the current price-tag.

I love Neil Gaimen. So I expected no less than to love this book but any long term fan knows an author can have a dud.

This is not that book.

This is where Gaimen thrives- lulls you into a feeling of an average story of adults reminiscing about childhoods and then, easy as you like, it becomes a fantastical tale of a boy and a girl (who's been 11 for a long time) and their attempts to save his family from a being that crossed over from the place with an orange sky to Our World, where it doesn't belong.

I won't say anymore for fear of ruining the suspense and skill of Gaimen pulling you into this brilliantly-crafted story.

Highly recommend (if you can't tell).

I must admit that since I read the reviews of this book on Amazon, my expectations for this book had been very high. Almost scarely so, as I was afraid to be disappointed by the actual reading experience. But that wasn't the case when I received the book and started reading... and couldn't put it away! I "swallowed" the book in two days and loved every minute of it. The story kept an excellent pace and the tension was always present. The characters and scenes were well developed and the emotional undertone of the book was masterful. I already recommended this book to a couple of friends.

A funny note: on they when I finished the book I saw a woman at the Central Station in Stockholm, walking amidst a rush-hour crowd - while reading the very same book. Apparently it was equally impossible for her to put it away, even despite the stress of pedestrian traffic of the central station. :)

Having recently read American Gods and rated it as an all-time favourite, I came to Ocean at the End of the Lane through the legion of Gaiman fans and the buzz around this new book.

I read Ocean in one day, which was in part due to its short length of about half a novel, and the nature of the captivating story. While it was constricted by the length, the strength of Gaiman's writing is the originality of the imagery, his wonderful lack of religious overtone and most importantly, what he leaves in my mind when the book is finished. This, Gaiman does better than any other author.

Ocean traces a few days of an unnamed narrator's childhood, recounted from beside a pond as an adult. They called the pond the Ocean as children and the narrator was just seven when it all happened.

The story's length constricts Gaiman's ability to keep us guessing, so from the beginning the path is clearly defined, with the likely outcome telegraphed from a long way out. While there is little scope for slight of hand Gaiman hangs his own brand of imagination and a lot else besides on the structure. In reading Ocean the strength is the sense of being placed back into childhood with all the horror, awe and lack of control that time invokes. It repeatedly invoked long forgotten sensations and memories. This is the accomplishment of Ocean.

There is a protracted section through the middle that really cranks up the sense of having no control as a child. For some this will add to the read, for me, as someone who hated being a child, and I never use the H word lightly, I just wanted that section over and to get on with the story (as I did my childhood). Your childhood might invoke a different reaction.

Gaiman's brilliance is the originality of what he places into our imaginations and as I've said, what he leaves there. The conclusion ties neatly with the beginning. A lesser author might be accused of exploiting sentimental cliche but Gaiman layers so much that reaches beyond raw emotion and then does something else really quite clever at the end. A story that did feel short and predetermined. But was totally original and equally the tale of all our childhoods. Moreover a tale that having read it, will now forever be invoked whenever the topic of childhood is discussed.

Brilliant. I hope this was helpful.

This book engages the reader from the opening pages. The narrator looks back, taking us from his childhood through a life that revolves around the Hempstock family. Lettie is something of an enigma. 'I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty spaces in my life'. From his lonely 7th birthday party, through 'living in books as a child - including comics', his early years involve a series of lodgers, including a tragic gambler. His placement with the threatening Ursula, who sounds scary in a fairy-tale style, leads to the narration 'for a fraction of a moment, my entire childhood felt like a lie'. His destiny is in the power of others. Distraught and feeling helpless he has strength in his hope.

There are some magical moments. 11 year old Lettie is typically childish in describing the local duck pond as an ocean. A figment we may recollect as a reflection of what the future may hold in the imagination yet bound by reality.

This a read that is at times uncomfortable, yet it's delights throw up the predicament of an unhappy childhood, uncaring parents, thrown into a world of cruelty and weirdness made more believable by the made-up fantasies that are not the sole providence of innocence but may be relevant to adults. This excellent novel provides plenty of deep thoughts and after thoughts. The prose is magnificent throughout.

Gaiman scores another triumph with this coming of age tale of a 7-year-old boy who finds true friendship in an 11 year-old girl. The plot is neither complex nor particularly groundbreaking. But if you are familiar with Gaiman's stories, you will find that the magic in them is sort of a given, and what separates this novel from countless other fantasy tales about a boy who faces supernatural forces larger than he can handle, is the way the magic is so intricately woven into Gaiman's story universe that when you encounter it, you almost miss it because it is so unobtrusive, and most important, believable.

In some ways an allegorical look at how a child views the adult world and its cunning complexities and inconsistencies, this is best exemplified in a pivotal scene when our unnamed protagonist faces his new nanny, who reveals herself to be more than just uncommonly sadistic and mean: "Ursula Monkton smiled, and the lightnings wreathed and writhed about her. She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air. She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty".

Gaiman does child narratives best, and sometimes I marvel at how accurately he inhabits the skin of children, such that when he writes about a child's belief in basic things like loyalty and courage, it resonates with the heart and soul of childlike conviction. For example, when the boy speaks of his complete trust in Lettie Hempstock, the mysterious 11 year-old with a soul as old as the hills, he says: "I believed in her, and that meant I would come to no harm. I knew it in the way I knew that grass was green, that roses had sharp, woody thorns, that breakfast cereal was sweet".

This novel is proof that good stories need not always have long, complex narratives - they just need to be sincere, and when appropriate, a little bit of magic always help.

I was hugely disappointed by what was supposed to be Gaiman's triumphant return to adult literature. I'm an enormous fan, and was greatly looking forward to reading this, however the story, whilst charming, is simplistic, and neither the plot, themes nor characters seem fully developed. It has a superficiality that one expects from a young adult novel (it certainly reads like a book aimed at children) but lacks the complexity one expects from a book for adults. The novel presents themes (nostalgia, childhood, growing up, loss etc.) but never goes any further than merely flagging them to the reader; there is no great exploration, no great description, and as a result the work feels rather empty. The reader plods along with the narrator, but ultimately doesn't really learn anything and the experience is rather hollow. By the end of the novel, I was left wondering what the point was. The length of the novel also sets it at a disadvantage; at only 243 pages, and set in a large, well spaced font with enormous page margins I feel a little short changed (from a content, rather than price, perspective). Plot and character could have easily been developed more, which would have made reading the novel a little less frustrating. It is a very rich world that Gaiman has created, and yet that is never really imparted upon the reader; lack of detail meant I never felt fully immersed in his world, nor fully engaged as a reader.

I so desperately wanted to love this book. I have given it 3/5 as while to my mind it fails as a book for adults, it could make an excellent YA novel, and so a middling score seemed the most fair. For a better look at childhood/nostalgia I'd suggest picking up the fascinating and thoroughly charming Coming Up for Air (Penguin Modern Classics) by George Orwell. If it's magic and myth that you're after, or you want to read something by Gaiman, I'd opt for American Gods over this any day.

I loved this book! I get the feeling Mr Gaiman put his heart and soul into this one. Whilst Neverwhere and American Gods were fascinating and wonderful reads, this one reached deeper into the well of emotions and brought back a ton of half-forgotten childhood memories of my own. At the end, I was sad to put it down and it left me feeling pretty wistful, I shall remember this for a long time....

The characters are fascinating and the story gripped me from start to finish.

The innocence of the narrator was touching and made some of the events all the more chilling when seen through the eyes of a child.

I've no doubt that I will re-read this book many times in the future.

Literary criticism is a hazardous affair. How do you make a serious discipline out of whether or not you like something? Before I get to my personal opinion let me make two observations, of what I believe to be objective facts, that will be pertinent to my case.

The first is that Neil Gaiman has ascended to the realm of immortals. His ascension owes much to his great talent but this talent is now somewhat irrelevant. Nowadays, if he published a compendium of other people's shopping lists, under his own name, it would sell a gazillion copies, endorsed by the gushing reviews of a dozen minor celebrities.

The second is that this book is short. The difference between a short story, a novella and a novel is hard to pin down and should not be decided by word count alone but one thing is very clear. This is about one third the length of `American Gods' and half the length of `Anansi boys'.

So now the opinions.

There are some things that I like about this book a lot. It evokes the world view of a bookish, introverted seven year old very well indeed. At one point I was literally stunned by a flashback to my own youth, triggered by a few very well chosen words. The magic and the threats, for the first half of the book are entirely in tune with this point of view.

But around three quarters of the way in, things get rather saggy. According to Sanderson's first law (look it up on Wikipedia) the magic is of the soft variety. Initially this just adds to the seven year old's view of reality but eventually, the degree to which undefined magic, with undefined limits, does whatever the hell it wants sucks all the dramatic tension out of the story. Should I worry about what happens next? Nah. They'll just sort it out with magic.

Then the length becomes a real issue. As a short story that evokes childhood it initially succeeds admirably but then outstays its welcome, dissipating much of the charm it had generated. As a novel which describes a complete world, it falls horribly short, feeling like a rough outline that begs for colour and definition. And then, as a consumer, I feel somewhat insulted by being sold this large print short story with the guise and price of a full novel.

There's also the niggling issue of the narrators memory of amnesia...

I find this all very disappointing. I like the majority of what Neil Gaiman has written and, as far as one can tell anything about a celebrity, he seems like a really decent and humane guy. I wanted this book to be great. But it isn't.

So why didn't his many trial readers tell him this while he was writing the story? I refer you to my first observation. Why didn't his editor or his publisher tell him? Maybe because he hadn't published an adult novel for eight years and they thought it was time to milk the cow...

Should you buy this book? Well, if you're already a starry eyed fan then the question is redundant. Of course you'll buy this book and, most likely, you'll want to run me out of town on a rail for detracting. If you're not a fan then I would direct you to one of his other books. `American Gods' or `Anansi Boys' perhaps, or, if you can brave the medium, `The Sandman'. Save this for when it finds its natural home in a collection of short stories.