The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

A Spoiler Free Review

Gaiman is masterful at drawing the reader in. Not gonna lie, had a hard time putting this one down.

The main character not being named is actually really nice from a Doyle-ist style perspective. The reader can more easily imagine they are the protagonist rather than having some preconceived notion of who the protagonist is based on their name. I mean, despite the protagonist being a boy and from the 1960s/1970s, I more or less was him. Super bookish and wanting so very much to find my own Lettie or other such magical world to inhabit.

Speaking of, the tone of this book really reminds me of the Seanan McGuire Wayward Children series. It has that same sort of whimsical yet very real feeling about it.

Ursula Monkton is somehow a mix of Gaiman’s Other Mother and Meredith from the 1998 version of The Parent Trap. I think she might be up there with Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter in terms of the just absolute menace she exudes. I throughly hated her, along with the protagonist. I wasn’t disappointed in her ending, either. And really, that solidified her as something like The Other Mother, at least in my head.

I quite enjoyed the Hempstock ladies. The ways their magic worked was mysterious and yet the very things women would work, if that makes sense. And yes, they did spark that “Mother, Maiden, Crone” thing in my mind. How could they not? I vaguely wish there were more stories about the Hempstocks, but it’s probably best that there aren’t. Too much of a good thing and all that.

Anyway, I really enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s another of Gaiman’s masterworks, I think. Or maybe I’m just a hardcore Gaiman fangirl. Who knows.

Favorite Quotes

"Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good." - Narrator

"Books were safer than other people anyway." - Narrator

"You only need men if you want to breed more men." - Ginnie Hempstock

"Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not." - Old Mrs. Hempstock

“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.” - Ginnie Hempstock