So with that, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you too The Ocean at the End of the Lane...
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a 2012 novel by Neil Gaiman, a British fantasy author renown for his unusually scruffy hair, dressing in any colour he likes as long as it's black and being acclaimed across a number of media, including prose, poetry, comic books, television and movies. Originally intended to be a short story, it soon outgrew this definition and became a novella, and soon after that the full fledged novel we're looking at today. It opens with a nameless protagonist (yes, another one!) riding aimlessly back to what remains of his childhood home after his mother's funeral. He comes across a farm that he believed an old friend lived in decades ago and sits down in front of the small pond behind the building, beginning to reminisce. Soon memories of a long forgotten incident in his childhood start to bubble up that are too impossible to believe, a strange series of events that begins with the apparent suicide of their current lodger and soon launches him into the affairs of another world entirely. As the memories come flooding back and take a sharper focus in his mind, the reader experiences each moment of it through the eyes of his seven year old self, constantly pondering if any of it is true, because surely it's all too fantastical for our hero to just forget... Isn't it?
Of all the Neil Gaiman stories, I think I'm glad that I'm able to talk about this one. Ocean is an interesting book when compared to the rest of his work, as it clearly has a different focus that's more abstract and experimental for him. It was written for his wife, Amanda Palmer, with a greater focus on things she likes - Which seems to amount to a story that's entrenched deeper in the real world than most of his work and that brings more personal feelings to the fore than ever. I don't want to dwell too long on it's origins, but this interview with Gaiman and this blog from Palmer weave an interesting narrative for the book's genesis, and for me helped to put a lot of the things I found problematic with this book into focus. Either way, the fact that he wrote it for his wife either because he missed her and desired to write something she would love, or to open his heart and let her examine his feelings in a way that he would never be able too any other way is beautiful and I'm glad this book exists, if only for that.
I have to admit, when I started reading, I didn't think I was going to like this one. Or at least, not as much as I wanted too. Unlike other works by Gaiman I've read, it was very slow to reel me in and I found the main character initially distracting. The problem with writing a more personal tale that's less blurred by the lines of fantasy after decades of adding splashes of those events into your fiction, is that so much of it seems familiar. The description of the house our protagonist lived in, for example, is the house from Coraline, because they're one and the same. Both drawn from the same memories of a house that Gaiman had grew up in as a child. And there are echoes of situations and events and places that feel familiar throughout, and I'm never quite sure if they're handled as well. It comes across feeling like one of Gaiman's more introspective short stories, although because it's a novel it takes longer to get to the meat of the story, or the weird that is going to inevitably surround it, spending more time focusing on the elements of those stories I'm not quite as keen on, and loses me a bit.
The game of 'Is this Neil?' you can play with the protagonist throughout the book is also distracting, but not quite to the same degree. I found the hero of the piece to be very relatable , possibly to a painful degree. He was a child who loves books, is slow to make friends, is a huge fan of Batman, is awkward at social functions and believes in white bread above every other kind, because it's not supposed to taste of anything as that's not it's job. That is more me than I feel comfortable admitting, and to a degree I can even relate to the relationship he had with his parents. When the protagonist says he envied the heroes in his book who got a quick smack and then all was forgotten? I understood. I only have one, very vivid memory of my mother ever laying a hand on me and to be honest? I think I prefer it to all the times that both of my parents have ever raised voices to me as a child. There's a certain hopeless, belittling feeling that it brings that has a greater impact than physical pain and as a child, it's harder to understand that people say things they don't mean because they're angry. Now, my parents are wonderful people and I will never hear a bad word said about them if it isn't in jest - I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for all the love, care and support they've given me and I truly appreciate it. However, when you're young it's very easy to take things to heart, and this came through in the book wonderfully. The moment the protagonist asked that one, last whimpered question of his father in the fairy ring? I smiled. It's the kind of defence you always wanted to mount, but were afraid it would just make them more angry, and it was beautiful.
As you may have picked up from that, the main character is a very relatable one and, as always, Gaiman excels at writing children. No thought feels too adult, no line of dialogue ever feels wrong coming out of his mouth and the entirely self-centred, yet naive and innocent, perspective of a child is maintained throughout. The first thing the protagonist asks, upon learning that the family car has been stolen, is if his comic is still on the back seat and if they stole that too. It's not a stupid question, or a selfish one, it's an honest one which reflects where the characters priorities lie. I also find it interesting that the story is told in flashback, so on occasion we get shots of his adult frame of mind as he remembers and narrates, occasionally giving a fresh perspective on certain elements of the story. I have to admit that despite all this, I don't feel like I really know him all that well. Especially compared to other Gaiman protagonists. I'm very familiar with the world inside his head, but I'm not as familiar with his place in it - As I was with Shadow, or Fat Charlie, or Tristan or even Coraline, Nobody or Odd. In those stories the world comes alive around them, and we hear bits and pieces of far off things such as how Fat Charlie got his name or of Shadow's time in prison learning coin tricks, here we don't really get anything of the sort. The story exists in the main characters mind, and while it makes sense for the edges of his world to seem more blurred and less fleshed out, it also means this world doesn't spring from the page and grab you the same way either. And ultimately, nor does the protagonist. I relate to him, I think he's a great example of a child character, but I'm not sure I'd go as far to say I'm terribly familiar with him.
The supporting characters are a little light on the ground in this venture too. You have the main character's family, his largely absent mother, his father who seems like a good man but for the most part exists as a puppet to a malevolent force for most of the book and his snot nosed brat of a sister who may only seem like a snot nosed brat because we're looking at her through the eyes of her older brother. There's also the Hempstocks. Three generations of women living together quietly on a farm at the end of the lane, who are really... To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure what they are. At first I thought they were witches, but the book refutes that quite early on. They seem to be refugees from the other world with the orange sky that we are introduced too later, but Old Mrs. Hempstock seems even older than that. Even older than creation. Her role in everything is still unclear in the end, but all I can tell you is I love her as I grew to love all the Hempstocks. Originally I found the two Mrs Hempstocks to be indistinguishable from one another, but they soon developed their own quirks and personalties, and as for Lettie I honestly wouldn't have minded if the whole book had been about her. I also loved the strange mix of science and mysticism that seemed to run through them, with Old Mrs. Hempstock having existed before the Big Bang and a delightfully fairytale-esque spin on particle physics that is, perhaps, one of the few things in this book that justifies all the praise it gets as a defining fairy tale for the modern age.
While the initial transition from the mundane to the weird was underwhelming, and by the end of the book I couldn't remember for the life of me why it happened, things really start firing on all cylinders with the introduction of Ursla Monkton and there are very few splutters from there on out. Ursla Monkton is the demon housekeeper from Hell, the reverse Mary Poppins in every sense of the word. She exists to make the life of the main character a walking nightmare and if I thought Fat Charlie got a kicking in The Anansi Boys? What this character goes through tops that tenfold. I'm not sure if it's more powerful because he's so young, but it does add to the helplessness of it all. Ursla Monkton is an adult, our character is a seven year old boy who has already forced one nanny out. That alone is scary enough, an adult who is out to get you and has the complete faith of your parents where you do not, add the fact that she's a literal monster onto that? And like I said, walking nightmare. The scenes that see our character a prisoner in his own home ring of implied child abuse, but soon turn into something that is very literal child abuse and I guarantee - Whatever you think of this book, there is one scene that will stick with you forever. It's sheer horror of the most heart pounding kind, and it's written so perfectly that it captures you right there, in the moment, with our hero.
I really can't fault the writing in this book. I've long admired Neil Gaiman for his descriptive ability, which may not be the most in-depth or detailed, but always does a good job of conveying both the mundane and the strange with equal clarity. While I also praised the descriptive text of A Shadow Over Innsmouth, this is different. Lovecraft describes things in a way that you feel as though you can see them, Gaiman describes them in a way that makes you feel as though they've existed in your imagination all along and were only looking for an excuse to come out. He evokes language that is simple to read, yet says everything it needs to say, and when he draws comparisons to other things they're always relatable. Like how he compares the dead body of the Opal Miner to a waxwork dummy, it's still human in shape, but everything that had made him human had been drained out. I also feel like this book contains some of the best wrting of Gaiman's career. The scene where our main character is pulling a worm from his foot is appropriately cringe worthy and very visceral, and as for the bathtub scene... Like I implied above, will live with me forever.
There's a number of interesting themes running through this book, but the one I latched onto most was the ruminations on what it means to be an adult. Whenever danger was afoot, it was marked by the absence or destruction of things we associate with childhood. The main character's SMASH comic is crumpled and ruined under the body of the dead miner, the border to keep Ursa Monkton in the house is made up of broken toys and then there's the kitten. The kitten is the ultimate miner's canary for the story, when it was around the main character was safe, secure, nothing could touch him - But when it wasn't there? The world was a dark and dangerous place, and something terrible was likely to happen to him. It forces him into a world that no child should have to face, and situations that even an adult would struggle to cope with. The line between child and adult is as distinct as it is tenuous, with the father of the hero acting more like a child than an adult and the main character forced to be braver than any of the actual adults around him. It shows that for all the years we might gain, all the wisdom and experience we may accumulate, on some level we're still the same person. As Lettie Hempstock says, 'Grown up's don't look like grown-ups on the inside either'. I know I don't feel like one, never have, yet when I was a child? They could seem to be a whole other race entirely. It's interesting, the difference between how we present ourselves to the world and how we actually are, and it's something that I can personally latch onto and relate to.
If I may derail this impressions to perhaps take you on the train to crazy town for a moment, something struck me half way through reading this. As well as the things that were familiar because they were taken from Gaiman's childhood and had been woven into other stories I'd read, there also seemed to be nods and winks to other work throughout. The song that shapes the world made a return from The Anansi Boys and a reference to a bazaar that shouldn't have been open yet and trades all manner of wonderful things which puts me in mind of both Stardust and Neverwhere. It did make me wonder, is a fictionalised account of how Neil Gaiman gets his ideas interwoven into this narrative? Or did Lettie pop off into other books during the narrative? It sounded crazy and reaching, until I read the following snippet from the interview above;
I kept expecting to write a story about the Hempstocks, but never did," Gaiman continued. "I had decided their family had spread out a bit. There's a Hempstock in 'Stardust.' A Hempstock in 'The Graveyard Book.' Then in 2003, I bought my first MINI Cooper and my father was visiting America at the time. I recalled my father having a MINI as well and asked why he got rid of his. He told of how he had a lodger who gambled away his money -- and his friends' money -- then stole my dad's MINI. Then, [my father] went down to the lane and found the man's body in the vehicle later that afternoon.
Knowing that the Hempstocks are so far flung through his fiction but only appeared properly in a tale inspired by a real life incident adds some credence to the whole thing, but even if it only exists in my head and I am overreaching, it's an interesting idea nonetheless.
With that idea safely released into the ether, let's break into the discussion point for this month. As I said above, this suggestion was very tongue in cheek and may have even been a joke, but even if it was I found myself captivated with the idea of answering it. The question that Richard asked was 'Has Neil Gaiman got much, much, less exciting now he's married to Amanda Palmer? Or was he always just kind of overrated?'
Now, for those who remember the original mission statement of this segment (mainly to get me to read more) you may be regarding my first couple of choices with a cynical, even judgemental, eye. A short story, and a very short novel is hardly the most inspiring of starts, afterall. But rest assured! To answer this question I read and re-read almost any Gaiman I could get my hands on, you may even be able to pinpoint when I was doing it by the amount of Gaiman references that emerged in the posts of this blog over the period that I was reading them. I've read a good eleven books, watched a couple of movies and even delved into a collection of his Batman work when I was bored one night and I feel that after doing this? The second part of this question is an easy answer, the first is a little more problematic.
Was he always kind of overrated? The simple answer is, no. Neil Gaiman is not overrated, not even in the sense of somebody who is really good, but perhaps not as good as all the attention they get. In a world where the names J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Mayer and E.L. James are on more people's lips than Neil Gaiman (and for clarity, I'm not trying to draw comparisons to any one of those authors with the other - Simply stating their work is not, and I doubt it will ever be, as consistently good or imaginative as Gaiman's) I don't think he could ever be overrated. Neil Gaiman is a font of wonderful ideas, even his short stories seem packed with things that I'd kill to be able to conjure up in my own imagination and it's no wonder that people seem to always ask him where they come from - One of the main blocks I have to writing my own fiction is finding an initial idea I can stick with, and yet there's Neil Gaiman with more ideas than he can seem to cope with. It'd be unfair, if he didn't use them so wonderfully.
And that's the other thing about Neil Gaiman, he may not be the most skilled writer in the world. The themes he tackles may not be the most ground-breaking or plumb the depths of the human soul. I can see how somebody who enjoys a more complex prose with grand political or philosophical statements woven intricately into the text, or entire worlds fully mapped out in the most minute of details so they feel like world histories instead of fictional kingdoms may be put off by him. They may even overlook him. But there's a simple joy to the way Neil Gaiman writes. It's highly accessible, easy to read and yet stokes the fires of the readers mind and asks them to imagine. Imagine a world where a falling star can be a beautiful, if petulant, young woman who is sought after by a cast of colour characters in a grand fairytale. Imagine a world where the dispossessed of London fall through the cracks into another London that is much like the one above, yet absolutely nothing like it at all. Imagine a world where Gods of every mythology roam the American landscape, brought there by generations of immigrants from across the world, even as new Gods based on the technologies we worship spring up to take their place.
His writing asks you to imagine, and you can. Clear, crisp, as if it was always there and you just needed to be reminded. On top of all this, his greatest feat of all, is that he makes it look easy. It's not so much that he makes it look like you could do exactly what he does, but that you don't need to write overly complex prose, with in-depth descriptions of everything, to be a successful writer. You can get away with something lighter, and it can carry just as much weight and power. I remember, years ago, when I first read American Gods. I felt inspired. I felt like I'd learned more about writing in that one book than I had in all the time reading, and fumbling with the idea of creating fiction, before it. It's a memory I always look back on when I'm feeling down and uncreative, it doesn't always help, but it's nice to know it's there.
As for the second part of the question, it's tough to judge because Ocean is the first full adult novel that Neil Gaiman has written since they were married. While I think that this novel is perhaps weaker than his previous work, it was also written under very special circumstances as we discussed above. He wrote it for Amanda, and tried to do something very different from the norm, and even though it's not perfect it's also not bad by any stretch. Even if it was, the fact that it arose in such unusual circumstances means that it is no indication of what Gaiman's future work is going to be like.
So let's cast the net further. The other prominent work that Neil Gaiman has written during the few years of his marriage is a children's book called Fortunately, the Milk that was published last year. You may remember in my year end retrospective, I mentioned going to a live reading of it and that experience was fairly glorious. So glorious I feverishly read the book again on the train home. Admittedly it's not as strong as his other children's books, but it also seems aimed at a younger age bracket than those works and what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in imagination. Fortunately, the Milk is a shaggy dog story that may or may not be true, and would be something the Them from Good Omens would be proud of. In fact, it kind of made me smile when I read about the adventures the Them dreamed up in their heads, as Fortunately, the Milk was all that distilled. It's a good book, but is it an exciting move for him? Is Ocean at the End of the Lane an exciting one?
Ultimately, I'd say yes. One can argue about the quality of Ocean until the tides come in, and if I'm being perfectly honest if you wanted me to stack everything he wrote pre-marriage to everything post? Yes, the pre-marriage would come up short, but you're also asking me to compare decades of work to that of a handful of years. What's exciting is an entirely different thing from what's good, and even though Ocean didn't hit all the marks for me, what it represents definitely excites me. It represents Neil Gaiman coming out of his shell as a writer and trying new things. It represents a new kind of book, which may call back to old themes and ideas from other works, but is something entirely different. It even has a new narrative structure that hasn't been seen in his novels before, usually constrained to his short stories. True, I'm not sure it works as well, but it's exciting to see him try. Ultimately, if Amanda Palmer is pushing Gaiman into new territory, I'm all for it. I may not enjoy the new work as much as I did the old, and one day it may alienate me completely. But on the other hand, if Gaiman can take moments of brilliance from this book? Which, I stress again, feel to me like some of the best writing of his career. If he can take that, and put it into something of consistent good quality, I'm guaranteeing you it'll be an instant favourite of mine.
And that is exciting!
I really struggled with the rating of this one. Originally I wanted to give it a three, but after Ursla was introduced and everything that happened in the house with her? I was set on upping it to a four. Having slept on it though, I just can't do that in good conscience. For me, the book was too slow in the beginning and when I compare it to other works by Gaiman, or even A Shadow Over Innsmouth, which I gave a four last month, I can't say I enjoyed it as much. Perhaps part of the problem is that I'm just too invested in the author. Giving impressions on this book is impossible without linking it back to his other work, and I honestly feel that in that regard I've been fair. I'm not going to sit here and bemoan the fact it isn't American Gods, but if I was asked to recommend a Gaiman book to a friend, this would be fairly low on the list. It makes me wonder if my impressions would be different if I were less invested in his other works, if, like Amanda Palmer, I'd be raving about it from the rooftops.
But that's not me. That's not the kind of impression I can give. So from me, The Ocean at the End of the Lane gets three out of five monkeys in a hat! If you're looking for something in the style of Neil Gaiman, that's lighter on the fantasy elements and packs a real emotional punch? I'd say this is is the book for you. Unfortunately that's not quite what I'm looking for, but I still enjoyed it enough to say it was a good read.
Next month, I'm going to be forced to reign in every single pun about sheep, lambs, and jumpers that I know because we're going to be looking at the first book in the Silo trilogy, Wool.
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