The Ocean At The End Of the Lane By Neil Gaiman

Warning - This is an outlier review for "The Ocean At The End of the Lane"

My sensitive, empathetic soul, love for animals and a cogent thought-process couldn’t marry the plot. The first-half with the animal-cruelty and child-abuse by the protagonist’s father gave me heebie-jeebies.

The novel starts with a quote by Maurice Sendak-
“I remember my own childhood vividly . . . I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew. It would scare them.”

The delicious food devoured by our unnamed protagonist throughout the major part of the plot was my only fuel to keep up with the book.

I was jolly-well wallowing in the vivid description of the meals.

Our 7-year-old nameless protagonist, uses kitten (who is killed quite early-on in the plot), books and “world of fantasy” as escape mechanisms from the indifference of his loveless parents and the company of humans.

"Books were safer than other people anyway"

He is extremely imaginative, creative, detailed, observant and inquisitive but introverted. The story primarily thrives and treads forward on his frenetic imaginations.

Moreover, by the end I felt that all characters weren't for real including Hempstocks but just a figment of one's imagination, they were incorporeal!

Can't mention was it first half or second half that I admired, because in the first half my heart ached due to animal (kitten and fish) demise and the ruthless cold punishment given by the Father on the pretext of the housekeeper, Ursula :( ,
and in second half my brain floundered due to the perplexed obscure plot.

The protagonist’s parents remain no longer affluent, and to make ends meet, they get a boarder - opal miner. The kitten "Fluffy" is run over by the opal miner.
Though he tries to sate the protagonist by gifting another one, but replacing the lost kitten's memories was ineffectual.

"I missed Fluffy. I knew you could not simply replace something alive, but Idared not grumble to my parents about it. They would have been baffled at my upset: after all, if my kitten had been killed, it had also been replaced. The damage had been made up."

When the protagonist is introduced to the Hempstocks, Lettie, my heart fluttered, when in Lettie's pond/ocean a dead fish is spotted.
Lettie dissects the flopping fish, and derives the reason of the death - a sixpence. I totally reprimand this scene, as it was not required ( I was battling with the kitten's death, and now this fish's dissection was unnecessarily introduced)

"She took the dead fish out of the net and examined it. It was still soft, not stiff, and it flopped in her hand"
"She produced a horn-handled pocketknife, although I could not have told you from where, and she pushed it into the stomach of the fish, and sliced along, toward the tail"

Abruptly, hunger birds are introduced in the latter half, and non-contextual jagged random stuff between Lettie and Ursula(housekeeper).

The obscure frustrating plot, neither traversed a direct current wave, nor an alternating sine wave. The plot thrived a steady rising wave till the first half and then it lurched and withered away miserably, falling down precipitously.

May be by the time I read the first half, my heart was broken into a million whimpering pieces due to animal killings, child abuse, so I wasn't able to concentrate on the obscure storyline in the second half.

The prologue and the epilogue are beautifully written.

The good takeaways were –

*sumptuous food, Lettie and the Hempstocks are kind enough to keep checking on the protagonist’s hunger and satiating him with steaming food.

*prologue and epilogue.

*Lettie's constant re-assurance to the protagonist for safety and care

"I said I’d keep you safe, didn’t I?”


A 2-star for the animal cruelty (atleast it appeared hideous to me), an obscure plot(maybe I have to read much more to get accustomed to such obscure plots), and child abuse by the father(it was disheartening).

There is a visceral magic (which disappears as soon as the reality is encountered) and visceral fear (fear is constantly living with the protagonist) throughout the story, but I am perplexed and not able to decide if it belongs to fantasy or magical realism?

I wasn't awed by the element of nostalgia or the atmosphere-building. It isn't rife with magic that remains with you after finishing the story.
May be due to the short story line, the emotional connect with the characters and atmospheric setting went askew.