The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Pub Date: 2013
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy
Nutshell: A man remembers his childhood friend and her family, and the unlikely experiences he had with them

So, as a self-respecting geek and lover of books, why is this the first Neil Gaiman book I've ever finished? Not sure. I suppose all the hype was part of it, the enthusiasm, the comic booky sort of aura that surrounded his work. It just kind of turned me off. Plus I tried to read American Gods a while ago and just couldn't quite get into it. If I'm remembering correctly, there was a sort of masculinity to it that I just wasn't able to get hold of for whatever reason. I liked the prose, but the subject matter just didn't entirely work for me.

This, however. This book. I am an American adult woman, and far, faaaaar past the point when the ideas of magic or faeries or any of that should be even remotely credible. And yet, this book tapped into that part of me that still absolutely believes in all of that. I can't entirely explain the feeling I had reading this book, other than to say that it almost felt like I'd read (if not actually experienced) something exactly like it before as a child. It felt familiar in a way that very few other books ever have. I don't know if any book has ever felt so innately perfect to my mind. Obviously, nothing in this book ever happened to me, but it feels almost like it did, because I had such a similar imaginative narrative growing up. It felt as though Gaiman tapped into my kid head and extracted exactly what I always suspected was out there. It was really a remarkable experience, reading this. 

I don't want to ruin any plot. Suffice it to say that an unnamed narrator returns to the home of his childhood friend Lettie, who was more than she seemed, and he has a very vivid memory of some events that happened when he was 7 years old that involved this girl and her family and his family and things that lived outside but got in. If children in peril aren't your thing, you might steer clear, but honestly it's all handled so deftly that it's there and gone. And, as the book's opening quote by Maurice Sendak rightly declares, "I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them."

I read this book in a matter of hours. I couldn't stop. It was so gorgeous, so ephemeral, so perfect. It is not snarky at all. I'm currently listening to the Secondary Phase of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show, so I know snarky geek. And I love snarky geek. But this isn't that. It's just beautiful and haunting and just the faintest tinge of disturbing. Like something out of a Celtic myth, which I love precisely because they are so...the world is almost mundane in them until suddenly something is just slightly, but perceptibly, off. Like a dream. 

I know I would have loved this book as a child, but I'm glad I read it now as well. It reminded me of what I believed then and what I believe still, somewhere.