Lit. of Horror, Fantasy and Sci-Fi: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane"

This was quite an intriguing story; just when I thought I'd figured out the story, another curve-ball is thrown at me and I end up with more questions as to what the heck is going on in this story. 

It starts out normal, the unnamed protagonist attending a funeral then strolls down memory lane--almost literally--and we, the reader, are catapulted into the past and go on the most bizarre adventure imaginable. In order to understand what is happening, you have to throw rationality out the window; rational thought does not exist in this world. I'm not even sure what kind of world this is, or what the inhabitants are. Clearly something walks among the humans, hidden in plain sight like the Hempstock family.

One would think, from an outsider's perspective, the events of the story are nothing more but the fabrications of a seven-year-old boy who spends more time in the world of books than in the real world; it would be the only way for these events to even remotely make sense. It leaves the questions readers might have unnecessary to answer, since it's all imaginative. But since our protagonist believes this all to be real, we readers must believe it to be real as well.

I still have no idea who--or what--the Hempstock family is. They're not human, of course, since they apparently don't age even when the protagonist has reached middle age. Are they witches? Aliens? Creatures from another dimension known as "the old country"? There's one part of the book where Lettie Hempstock, an 11-year-old girl, looks like sheets of silk when she is in the ocean (which is looks like a duck pond). 

I definitely got a "Coraline" vibe from the book, with the antagonist who goes by Ursula Monkton. She reminded me of the Other Mother, but only because she--or it--trapped and influenced people to satisfy her needs, invading lives outside of her world. I loved how Gaiman used the gray and pink colors to signify the antagonist; when those colors are mentioned, the reader knows what they are referring to.

Neil Gaiman definitely pulled me in with this, I kept wanting to know what happened next when I reached the end of a chapter; this is perhaps the first book, in a long time, that I've completed within a day. Even if I still don't understand certain things, I just go along with it since it's easier to go with the flow rather than logically figure things out. Knowing Neil Gaiman's work, logic never seems to exist.