50 Books Challenge, Take 2 - The Ocean At The End Of The Lane (Audio Book) by Neil Gaiman
My Gaiman-ness continues with The Ocean at the End of the Lane. This book is short, especially compared to the doorstopper that is American Gods. However, it still packs quite a punch. Gaiman reads this book in the audio book version, and in the introduction he warns that it is dark. He is not wrong. This story would have terrified me if I read it (or had it read to me) eighteen years ago.
The book follows a man who is visiting the property of a childhood friend of his. Said friend lived on an idealistic farm and on the grounds of that farm is a pond that was dubbed an ocean. (At first, we think it's just in the way that children name things, but later we find it's more than that.) The narrator remembers his childhood, meeting the owners of the farm and the strange things that happened afterwards.
When the narrator was seven years old, he made friends with Lettie Hempstock. Lettie lives on a farm at the end of the lane with her mother and grandmother. The Hempstocks, as it turns out, are magical. Exactly how is never really explained. They're not witches (they don't like being called that) they're more like... goddesses, maybe? Some kind of benevolent Great Old Ones? Gaiman makes wonderful use of the maid, mother and crone trope here.
Anyways, the Hempstocks make it their duty to protect the world from "fleas," monsters from another universe who try to get into ours and corrupt or destroy it. Lettie takes the narrator on one of her banishing missions and a piece of the monster hitches a ride back to the world in the boy's body. It later takes human form and sets about trying to destroy all the boy holds dear. Only the Hempstocks can help him, but it's not easy.
Beyond the slightly Lovecraftian horror elements, there's some more real-life kind of horrors too. There is a memorable scene where the boy's father tries to drown him in a bathtub. It's implied that the father is prompted to do this by the monster, but it's not clear how much if it was the monster's influence and how much of it wasn't. The monster sneaks into the world as a worm inside the boy's foot. The scene of him pulling the worm out of his foot is body horror to the extreme simply because the boy isn't afraid of the worm, simply curious about it at first. It's amazingly disturbing.
This book also struck a chord with me and my own childhood nostalgia. As an adult, the narrator can't visit his childhood home because it's long been demolished. He has many fond and not so fond memories of that place. He recalls his "safe" places where he would go to read or escape. I'm like that about my home in Canada and in particular, Victoria Beach. My grandparents sold their cabin there... so I can't visit my old territories any more. I remember my semi-private "safe" places, but the last time I was there, a back lane had been cut through the woods, exposing my semi-secretive places. I never would have felt "safe" there again.
Over-all, I enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It isn't the best book ever, but it's interesting and scary and quite melancholy at the end.
My random quote is from the book, and it's another line that I really related to. When I was feeling depressed after my dad's death, I used to 'disappear' and read. Often, I'd dive into an Animorphs book. I think I spent the whole summer of 2000 reading. The reading distracted my brain away from dark thoughts. It isolated me, but I think in a way it also saved me.
Random Quote:
“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible”
The book follows a man who is visiting the property of a childhood friend of his. Said friend lived on an idealistic farm and on the grounds of that farm is a pond that was dubbed an ocean. (At first, we think it's just in the way that children name things, but later we find it's more than that.) The narrator remembers his childhood, meeting the owners of the farm and the strange things that happened afterwards.
When the narrator was seven years old, he made friends with Lettie Hempstock. Lettie lives on a farm at the end of the lane with her mother and grandmother. The Hempstocks, as it turns out, are magical. Exactly how is never really explained. They're not witches (they don't like being called that) they're more like... goddesses, maybe? Some kind of benevolent Great Old Ones? Gaiman makes wonderful use of the maid, mother and crone trope here.
Anyways, the Hempstocks make it their duty to protect the world from "fleas," monsters from another universe who try to get into ours and corrupt or destroy it. Lettie takes the narrator on one of her banishing missions and a piece of the monster hitches a ride back to the world in the boy's body. It later takes human form and sets about trying to destroy all the boy holds dear. Only the Hempstocks can help him, but it's not easy.
Beyond the slightly Lovecraftian horror elements, there's some more real-life kind of horrors too. There is a memorable scene where the boy's father tries to drown him in a bathtub. It's implied that the father is prompted to do this by the monster, but it's not clear how much if it was the monster's influence and how much of it wasn't. The monster sneaks into the world as a worm inside the boy's foot. The scene of him pulling the worm out of his foot is body horror to the extreme simply because the boy isn't afraid of the worm, simply curious about it at first. It's amazingly disturbing.
This book also struck a chord with me and my own childhood nostalgia. As an adult, the narrator can't visit his childhood home because it's long been demolished. He has many fond and not so fond memories of that place. He recalls his "safe" places where he would go to read or escape. I'm like that about my home in Canada and in particular, Victoria Beach. My grandparents sold their cabin there... so I can't visit my old territories any more. I remember my semi-private "safe" places, but the last time I was there, a back lane had been cut through the woods, exposing my semi-secretive places. I never would have felt "safe" there again.
Over-all, I enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It isn't the best book ever, but it's interesting and scary and quite melancholy at the end.
My random quote is from the book, and it's another line that I really related to. When I was feeling depressed after my dad's death, I used to 'disappear' and read. Often, I'd dive into an Animorphs book. I think I spent the whole summer of 2000 reading. The reading distracted my brain away from dark thoughts. It isolated me, but I think in a way it also saved me.
Random Quote:
“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible”