Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Review

I received The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman as a gift for Christmas. I wasn't sure what to expect, because I had not heard anything about it.  I have to say that it was one of the best Christmas gifts I have ever received.  If you haven't read the book, you should.

I love to read, so I could completely relate to the main character who had a deep love for books and found them as his solace as a child. The way that Ocean at the End of the Lane is written reminds me in a lot of ways of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine.  There were moments in both books  that made me fall in love with good food all over again. The descriptions of food made me relish those moments in life when you taste something that brings an inner balance to you.  It made me long for the collard greens by Dr. Jolly, and miss the days when my mother would take the time to make haluski.  The memories of fresh peaches from my childhood, so juicy there was a trail that ran down my arm with every bite rang solidly in between the words.

The Ocean at the End of Lane is not about food. It is very much a book that gives you food for thought. Part of me wishes it was, because food plays an integral part in memory and I would love to have a meal at the Hempstocks table; however I think that what the book is really about is finding yourself. There was a good part of the book that made me want to cry, and I had utterly convinced myself that Neil Gaiman couldn't write anything cheerful ever. Every childhood has horrors that there is no escape from, and it is part of the journey one must make to reach adult hood. When I finished the book, I dried more than a few tears and was really grateful for the fact that Neil Gaiman doesn't write bubble gum fiction. He writes good solid fiction that knows how to ping the recess of your mind and bring forth emotion that you didn't even know was bottled inside you.

The book reminds me of what it was like to be a child and to have to deal with grown up things much sooner before a person is ready to.  It reminded me of how hard it is to learn those lessons and that looking back and understanding what you are seeing is even harder to do then most people would believe. It reminded me that the outsides and the insides of a person very rarely match.  I am grateful for this reminder.

“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.” 
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane