The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel has gotten almost overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and readers. And rightly so. It is a good story, well written, interesting characters. The narrator is a seven year old boy caught in a frightening, bewildering series of events begun when his parents’ border, an Australian opal miner, commits suicide. The boy wakes up choking on a shilling and others in his neighborhood experience stangeness all related to money.
The boy visits the neighbors at the end of the lane, an eleven year old girl, her mother and grandmother. The girl takes him with her to remove the “flea”, a supernatural creature, that is causing the problems. She thinks she bound the flea to its current location but in fact it sent a piece of itself into the boy.
The boy’s mother hires a new housekeeper, Ursala Monkton, whom the boy recognizes immediately as the flea. The creature wants to make everyone happy, at least at first, but fears the boy and influences the father to nearly drown him in the tub.
Summary, The Good and Not So Good
I got caught up in this and enjoyed it very much while reading the story, but once done it raised nagging questions. The story is sold as a novel but in fact is more a novella; with plenty of white space it is 178 pages, That caused several flaws.
- The Hempstock ladies were never explained. The story alludes to them being older than the big bang and immortal, but what they actually are and why they live as they do is never explained. That’s not uncommon in fantasies where we really don’t want a detailed, technical explanation of every magical element, but it left me wondering what they were for. A longer book would have given more opportunity to explain.
- The ending was strange. The boy revisits his old home after a funeral and wanders down to the Hempstock farm where he remembers the entire story. Grandma Hempstock tells him he has been there before but as he leaves the memories fade immediately. We never learn who the funeral was for, nor why the character cannot remember anything once he leaves the farm.
- Ursala Monkton had immense power, yet was controlled by the Lettie Hempstock and destroyed by the hunger birds. Yet neither Lettie nor her mother could control the hunger birds when they attacked the boy.
- The boy gets a cat that becomes his dearest companion yet cannot remember what happened to her. Nor does he even remember her until he begins to remember that summer he was seven. If you love a cat you remember it.
These are minor points. You would expect unexplained characters and events in a short story, not so much in a novel. Yet the book did not strike me as one that would have benefited had Gaiman written more. This fit his style and allowed the mood to swing from somber to fearful to contentment.
I read through a few of the reviews on Amazon and noticed that the negative ones either found the book boring or felt cheated by the extreme short length. I did not find it boring and the length probably fit the story and Gaiman’s style better than a full-fledged novel.
Overall I found The Ocean at the End of the Lane excellent, one of the more enjoyable books by Neil Gaiman that I have read. Although the main characters are children this is not a children’s book. Teens would enjoy it but it is written for adults. Five stars.
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