jethrien

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Contemporary fantasy
Thingummies: 5

Synopsis: A short novel about a little boy, an otherworldly hunter, and the mysterious family living at the end of the lane. Sweet and terrifying as only Gaiman can be.

Thoughts: Gaiman's worlds seem to exist a quarter of a degree off of ours, just far enough for the terrible and wonderful things that haunt our subconscious to actually be true. This particular book deals with childhood and growing up and the losses incurred.

He's particularly good at the visceral image. At one point, the protagonist removes a parasite from his foot. It's described in such detail that my skin just crawled. It goes both ways, though--at another point, the little boy is disturbed by an adult breaking down into tears, saying that it's wrong for adults to cry because they don't have mothers to comfort them. Not only does it play up the pitifulness of the crying adult, but also that touching, fragile innocence of a child just starting to grasp the tragedies of the wider adult world.

I'm sure you could write a short paper on how this entire book is an analogy for the loss of childhood innocence, but at least on a first read, that overlooks the beauty of the story itself. It feels like the kind of thing that children would believe, and that in our deepest hearts, we still believe. That just beyond the edge of what we can see, strange and wonderful things are lurking. That somehow there might be a way to, for a bright shining moment, fully understand everything. That the world is a terrible, dangerous place, but that we will still be rescued in the end. And that every rescue has a price.