The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman opens with a loss. The narrator has just been to a funeral and is on his way to the reception when he decides to stop by his childhood home. It’s nothing like he remembers; it has been demolished and replaced with new homes. But he begins to remember something that happened in his childhood, and he heads toward the farm at the end of the road, Hempstock Farm. He remembers the little pond that Lettie Hempstock had convinced him was an ocean.

And he begins to remember what happened that spring when he was seven years old.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a book about trauma and memory and how it changes over time as we grow older and farther away from our childhoods. It is a story about the magic and terror of childhood. And it begs us not to forget.

One of the reasons I kept a diary as a child was because I didn’t want myself to forget what it was like to be a child. I felt like the adults around me didn’t remember and so couldn’t understand me or what I was going through. It’s hard to be a kid! Everything is new, all the time, and you don’t always understand what’s going on. And that can be scary.

Neil Gaiman’s unnamed narrator in The Ocean at the End of the Lane experiences the terror of being a child. He experiences mundane childhood traumas—such as sibling rivalries, the hurt you feel when adults don’t believe you, physical abuse from a father—at the same time as facing magical beings from another world wreaking havoc on his life. He needs the help of the mysterious Hempstock family to fix it, with their pond that could be a magical ocean.

His child self had no idea what was going on, and the adults around him didn’t believe him and dismissed his fears. And that’s a relatable feeling. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a relatable book. Things we didn’t understand as kids seemed magical and mysterious, after all, didn’t they?

Or maybe they really were magical, and we just forgot.

Sparked Joy: 5/5

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was published in 2013. Here is Neil Gaiman’s website. Support your local bookstore if you can, or visit your local library!