[Book Review] The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman (Spoilers Included!)

(picture taken from bookkaholic.com)

"A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home and is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl and her mother and grandmother. As he sits by the pond behind the ramshackle old house, the unremembered past comes flooding back -- a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy."

"The Ocean At The End Of The Lane" had been my first Neil Gaiman book. I had heard his name before, but had seen it rarely in the books that had adorned the local bookstore. The said book, however, had caught my eye, since the cover was quite attractive. (Perhaps because it was misplaced -- it was in the stand where Nicholas Sparks' and Paulo Coelho's name were the stars. A dark blue, seemingly dark cover would've sprung out at you between a copy of "The Last Song" and "Veronika Decides To Die".)

Since I can't take pictures of my own copy because I don't trust my phone's camera quality, I just took some from the internet.
(taken from overstock.com)

 I read the synopsis at the back and was intrigued at once. Admittedly, I thought it was in the psychological genre, and so I bought it (or rather, told a friend of mine to buy it for me. Thanks, Tino! (not his real name)). The cover had minor damage, perhaps because of the rough handling of store personnel and customers, but nonetheless it made my heart flutter to finally take care of the book for myself. My copy had been one of the last two copies of the book in the whole store.

The pages had also caught my attention, since the pages weren't the ordinary pages of an ordinary book. They looked like... well... paper. Unevenly cut paper. Some pages looked like they were pages from a soggy notebook, ripped instead of cut. Other pages would be pristine. I was amazed at how much detail the book had gotten, down to each page, which made it look like an old journal filled with sentiments. After finishing the book, in a way I understood the necessity of the pages' design. It was full of sentiment and evokes a feeling of nostalgia that no one could place. (However, I do not know if the pages are like this as well in other editions. I have researched some copies and the pages are cut cleanly. I have the international edition. Perhaps that's why?)


STORYLINE

It was only a duck pond, out at the back of the farm. It wasn't very big. 

Lettie Hempstock said it was an ocean, but I knew that was silly. She said they'd come here across the ocean from the old country.

Her mother said that Lettie didn't remember properly, and it was a long time ago, and anyway, the old country had sunk.

Old Mrs. Hempstock, Lettie's grandmother, said they were both wrong, and that the place that had sunk wasn't the really old country. 

She said the really old country had blown up. 

What really interested me in the story was that it wasn't what I was expecting. Here I am, thinking, "Oh, 'Neil Gaiman'? Haven't I heard about him before? Hm... no? Well, I'll just read one of his books and find out... Oh, 'The Ocean At The End of The Lane'? Sounds intriguing... Looks intriguing!" 

I admit, I wasn't expecting it to be a fantasy story, so I got confused when the Hempstocks started getting quite... well... neat. For goodness' sake, Old Mrs. Hempstock can see and differentiate neutrons and electrons. She can sense when a coin is made by putting her ear on it and licking it.

Also with that place of the orange sky where Ursula Monkton was, and how, after infiltrating the narrator's family, had suddenly become the father's mistress. The suicide of the opal miner. The death of a kitten, his only friend. The empty table on the narrator's birthday party. The near-drowning punishment of the father in the bath tub. The blatant bullying of a sibling. The act of seeing your father have sex with what you know as the monster while you were supposed to be locked up in your room right after your punishment. The near-death situation while choking on a coin. The near-death situation of touching a live wire. The near-death situation of getting hit by a car. The near-death situation of being in an open field in a thunderstorm.

Signs of serious problems are all over the book. And yet...

Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. 

And yet the book has such a clear connection to childhood. The innocence. The gullibility. The frailty. The stubbornness you get from being stupid. The heartstrings that had tugged itself loose when the narrator said:

"Does it make you feel big to make a little boy cry?"

 For this book, I salute Neil Gaiman. The book has such nice twists. It has such an interesting story, so original (Plus, the description of the food is just -- UGH). Highly recommended! It's such an interesting read! I have finished reading it for over a week and I'm still not over it.