The Ocean at the End of the Lane

This Thanksgiving my mother came up to visit me and brought me a copy of, The Ocean at The End of The Lane. Since this past summer I’ve wanted to get my hands on this novel by Neil Gaimen, and she knew it. I have a good mom.

            I did what any self-respecting 22-year-old introvert would do and read it in one sitting. It’s filled with a corner of the room loneliness I didn’t even know existed. And it moved me. Much in the same way wind moves a mountain, except it happened all at once and I didn’t even know it.

            I’d recommend the novel to anyone interested in speculative fiction or Neil Gaimen or great writing in general. The better than brilliant narrative is there. The characters feel and react and live and you can’t help but feel a little voyeuristic when reading this book. By the end you feel like you’ve learned something you weren’t supposed to know. But you feel like you’ve really learned.  And that’s hard for a book to do, but the ones that do deserve to be read and written about and taught in classrooms.

            Few writers can envelope you in the same way that Gaimen does in his works. There’s darkness to his work but you can’t always point it out —Like the swift black thing in the corner of your eye that causes you to turn.

If you’ve never read anything by Neil Gaimen before The Ocean at The End of The Lane is as good a place as any to start. Its short and can be read and understood in a day. It’s also just very, very, well written.

I can’t wait to read it again. Hopefully not too soon. Hopefully I can resist the urge. I already here it calling.