The Ocean at the end of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the end of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Tags: Mysticism, Magical realism, fiction, horror, fantasy, alternate world, dark fantasy, good prose, 2021-read

Rating 5/5 😍

I loved this book so much! I am so grateful to authors like Neil Gaiman who don't seem to really inhabit - atleast in their heads - the same droll and mundane world that we do. They live in fantastic universes constituting magical creatures that are both good and evil. His prose is a flowing river that sweeps and consumes  it's reader away into the world it's creating. I liked to inhabit it so much and didn't want to come out that I read the book  "cover to cover" - not even stopping at the acknowledgements page as I usually do. 🙃🙃

The narrator of the story is a small boy of age seven whose life is forever changed when unusual things start happening in his neighborhood. People get money out of nowhere and there are also unexplained suicides,murders and other unpleasant events. A black man from south africa renting a room in the boy's house commits suicide -  for no apparent reason - and while identifying the dead body, the boy meets a girl named Lettie Hempstock who lives on a farm at the end of the lane from his big,green house. She seems to know all the answers to his questions about the strange happenings in their neighborhood. She lives with her mother Ginnie and grandmother Old Mrs.Hempstock. He doesn't know it yet - but he has entered into the company of beings that are not really human and who claim to have been living "forever", seen the making of the moon and the planets and know things that have happened,are happening and are going to happen. While it sure feels safe,secure and even a little bit thrilling to be with such beings - there is always danger lurking right behind as we shall see if we read on.  Lettie knows the cause of the unusual happenings and goes into a strange place at the back of her farm to fix it. She takes the boy with her too. While she is "dealing" with whatever she had to - a creature, a "flea" which is cruel,cunning and vindictive attaches itself to the boy. She travels back with him to mortal world in his body - freed from its imprisonment. This becomes a source for his life falling into mortal danger and  what follows is how the boy is rescued by Lettie and her family? Who are they and the other creatures they fight with in order to save the boy ? Lettie has promised to save him no matter what - was she able to keep it? If so, at what price? 

This is a good fantasy story - started off as a short story by Mr.Gaiman but evolved into a fuller novel. The Ocean in the title is really a small pond in the backyard of the Hempstocks' farm - but it is as wide,deep and powerful as the ocean that surrounds the universe (as they say in myth) - it can cure,heal and provide infinite wisdom. 🙂 The only aspect of this book I had trouble getting through was child abuse - the flea making the boy's father abuse him by dunking his body completely under cold water and his loneliness,fight/flight for survival from his only family had a real visceral quality to it. 😢