Books 2014 - Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

[byslantedlight]

Oh, what can I say about this book... which I've been waiting to come out in paperback for aaaaages over here. I know that someone else on my flist is reading it now, or about to though, so under a cut we go... *g*

I think Joanne Harris summed it up well for me in the quote on the cover of the book: Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul. - that was pretty much how I felt when I was reading this, all swallowed up! The story is that of a man attending a funeral, who takes the free hour he has between service and wake to go back to the place he grew up. The house his family first lived in is long gone, but he finds himself driving along the road that turns into a lane that brings childhood memories back - of the year when he was seven, that he found the ocean at the farmhouse at the end of the lane. We're taken back with him as he meets again one of the three women who lived in the farmhouse, and sits on the bench and gazes at the pond...

...and it's the sort of story that is just like being seven years old again, with all the joys (reading!) and all the dreads (Ursula Monkton is truly horrible) and the shadows and dark nights and the strange things that happen in the world when you're just getting used to what being in the world means. It's also a story that is almost difficult to write about, because it reminds me a bit of various Inupiat stories I've read (stay with me here... *g*) They'd be stories of something that happened - but that seemed to be all. No moral, no meaning, not even and they all lived happily ever after (which means that no matter what happens you'll surmount it and everything will be okay, right?), just the story - this is what happened. When I first read some they seemed incredibly strange (like this one), because weren't stories supposed to have an overall message of some kind, weren't they supposed to tell us something about the world we live in that will help us live in it too? Even if it's just this is how it works. But they didn't seem to - or at least the authors didn't do the work of that for us, they just shared a story of something that might have happened, and we had to do the work. Which is sort of the way I think of horoscopes and the Tarot and things like that - they're stories really, and we can use our twisty brains to make something from them that means something to us personally - and because we've used our own twisty brains, it will mean something to us.

OatEotR feels a bit like that to me right now. There's lots of fab understandings and thoughts in there, many of which are all over the internet of course:

I like little think-y things like that. But the book overall is really just a story being told (an amazing story, told in a wonderful way), and if we want more than just a wonderful story we have to work out the rest for ourselves. How does magic and memory and childhood and being lost and being found all fit in to our lives...? How does the world that works like that fit into the world that we see? And I like think-y books like that too - perfect!

There's an interview with Gaiman at the end of the book, and one thing he said grabbed me right up, because it was just what I'd been musing over the other day - whether a particular story he'd written was supposed to be for children or adults. In the interview he's asked whether he consciously approaches his books differently, depending on whether they're written for adults or children, from an adult or a child's perspective. And he says Normally the audience for any of my books is me. ... Ocean at the End of the Lane is the first time I really had to stop and think to myself, OK, who am I writing this for in terms of age?, because I'd never had that as an issue before - I'd never had to think about it. And that totally makes sense... *g*

And now I'm going to go away and think about Ocean at the End of the Lane some more... *g* If anyone else has read it, I'd love to hear what you think though - I've not even gone to read other reviews yet (I'm not allowed to until I've done some work today... *sighs* I wish work could be this!)

And it's another one for my Once Upon A Time Challenge too... *g*

Read at least one book from each of the four categories. In this quest you will be reading 4 books total: one fantasy, one folklore, one fairy tale, and one mythology.
Fantasy
Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Folklore
Thursbitch by Alan Garner

Fairy tale
Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Mythology