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The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel by [Neil Gaiman]

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Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Neil Gaiman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

8,978 ratings

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A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s first new novel for adults since his #1 New York Times bestseller Anansi Boys.

This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real...

Length: 259 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“[W]ry and freaky and finally sad. . . . This is how Gaiman works his charms. . . . He crafts his stories with one eye on the old world, on Irish folktales and Robin Hood and Camelot, and the other on particle physics and dark matter.” -- Chicago Tribune on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“[A] story concerning the bewildering gulf between the innocent and the authoritative, the powerless and the powerful, the child and the adult. . . . Ocean is a novel to approach without caution; the author is clearly operating at the height of his career.” -- The Atlantic Wire on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“[A] compelling tale for all ages . . . entirely absorbing and wholly moving.” -- New York Daily News on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“The impotence of childhood is often the first thing sentimental adults forget about it; Gaiman is able to resurrect, with brutal immediacy, the abject misery of being unable to control one’s own life.” -- Laura Miller, Salon

“Poignant and heartbreaking, eloquent and frightening, impeccably rendered, it’s a fable that reminds us how our lives are shaped by childhood experiences, what we gain from them and the price we pay.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“His prose is simple but poetic, his world strange but utterly believable―if he was South American we would call this magic realism rather than fantasy.” -- The Times (London) on THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE

“Gaiman has crafted an achingly beautiful memoir of an imagination and a spellbinding story that sets three women at the center of everything. . . .[I]t’s a meditation on memory and mortality, a creative reflection on how the defining moments of childhood can inhabit the worlds we imagine.” -- Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI)

“’The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ is fun to read, filled with his trademarked blend of sinister whimsy. Gaiman’s writing is like dangerous candy―you’re certain there’s ground glass somewhere, but it just tastes so good!” -- Bookish (Houston Chronicle book blog)

“[W]orthy of a sleepless night . . . a fairy tale for adults that explores both innocence lost and the enthusiasm for seeing what’s past one’s proverbial fence . . . Gaiman is a master of creating worlds just a step to the left of our own.” -- USA Today on The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“This slim novel, gorgeously written, keeps its talons in you long after you’ve finished.” -- New York Post on The Ocean at the End of the Lane --This text refers to the mass_market edition.

About the Author

Neil Gaiman is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of books for children and adults whose award-winning titles include Norse Mythology, American Gods, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Coraline, and The Sandman graphic novels. Neil Gaiman is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

--This text refers to the mass_market edition.

From the Back Cover

UK National Book Awards 2013 "Book of the Year"

"Fantasy of the very best." Wall Street Journal

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

"[Gaiman's] mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown." New York Times Book Review

--This text refers to the mass_market edition.

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2013: Neil Gaiman's intent was simple: to write a short story. What he ended up with instead was The Ocean at the of the Lane--his first adult novel since Anansi Boys came out in 2005, and a narrative so thoughtful and thrilling that it's as difficult to stop reading as it was for Gaiman to stop writing. Forty years ago, our narrator, who was then a seven-year-old boy, unwittingly discovered a neighboring family’s supernatural secret. What happens next is an imaginative romp through otherwordly adventure that could only come from Gaiman's magical mind. Childhood innocence is tested and transcended as we see what getting between ancient, mystic forces can cost, as well as what can be gained from the power of true friendship. The result is a captivating tale that is equal parts sweet, sad, and spooky. --Robin A. Rothman

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In Gaiman’s first novel for adults since Anansi Boys (2005), the never-named fiftyish narrator is back in his childhood homeland, rural Sussex, England, where he’s just delivered the eulogy at a funeral. With “an hour or so to kill” afterward, he drives about—aimlessly, he thinks—until he’s at the crucible of his consciousness: a farmhouse with a duck pond. There, when he was seven, lived the Hempstocks, a crone, a housewife, and an 11-year-old girl, who said they were grandmother, mother, and daughter. Now, he finds the crone and, eventually, the housewife—the same ones, unchanged—while the girl is still gone, just as she was at the end of the childhood adventure he recalls in a reverie that lasts all afternoon. He remembers how he became the vector for a malign force attempting to invade and waste our world. The three Hempstocks are guardians, from time almost immemorial, situated to block such forces and, should that fail, fight them. Gaiman mines mythological typology—the three-fold goddess, the water of life (the pond, actually an ocean)—and his own childhood milieu to build the cosmology and the theater of a story he tells more gracefully than any he’s told since Stardust (1999). And don’t worry about that “for adults” designation: it’s a matter of tone. This lovely yarn is good for anyone who can read it. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: That this is the popular author’s first book for adults in eight years pretty much sums up why this will be in demand. --Ray Olson --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home and is drawn to the farm at the end of the road where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl and her mother and grandmother. As he sits by the pond -behind the ramshackle old house, the unremembered past comes flooding back--a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

File size : 1067 KB
Publication date : June 18, 2013
Print length : 259 pages
Word Wise : Enabled
Publisher : William Morrow; Reissue edition (June 18, 2013)
ASIN : B009NFHF0Q
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Language: : English
Lending : Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #10,753 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #29 in Read & Listen for $14.99 or Less
- #64 in Read & Listen for Less
- #126 in Magical Realism

Customer Reviews:
8,978 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		66%
4 star		19%
3 star		9%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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readingisbreathing

Get the Audiobook

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2016

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If you ever have a chance to listen to a Neil Gaiman book on audio, do it. I believe he narrates several of his audio books and he is a velvety-voiced reading god.

Beyond the stellar narration, the story was just so-so. I started reading it last year and quickly grew bored, so I stopped. Then I decided to give it another go when I found the audio version with Gaiman reading.

His voice and inflections give the story a little punch, but not enough to make up for all the elements I felt this novel lacked.

This is a book that started off as a short story and was expanded into a novel, and you can tell. For me, it still sits somewhere in-between a short story and a full blown novel, and I thought it could have used some more expanding and exploring of the characters, most of whom felt never fully realized.

Still, Gaiman's narration merits an extra star, and I did enjoy letting him read to me.

70 people found this helpful

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justme

Unusual in a good way... Interesting adult novel

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2016

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This book was unusual, but mostly in good ways. I've state before in reviews that I really don't care for books written in first person and tend to avoid them. Despite being told tn first person, I fell right into this book and read a significant portion of it by then end of the first reading afternoon. I'm really going to try to make this review spoiler-free, because this is one of those books that is just hard to tell what it's "about" without giving too much away.

Gaiman's sense of description and and the way he puts words together really is interesting. I really found it interesting that the narrator--and his family--don't have names, just roles. As a writing device that could have been annoying and a poor decision, but here I actually think it served quite well for reasons I don't quite now how to put into words. I found the Hempstocks to be quite likable and fascinating and like-able. Having been quite bookish at most point in my childhood, I could relate to the un-named, male narrator (even as female reader).

Much like _Coraline_, this one has a couple of highly quotable passages. I could probably quote several whole sections. My favorite: "Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they just look like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world." Ah, how much easier growing up--and life in general--would be if this was universal knowledge... LOL When I was younger, it was so easy to think, "Adults just don't understand..." but as I've gotten older... I've come to realize yes, some adults do maybe forget what it's like to be young and going through life's various growing-pains... As I've gotten older, though, I've realized that most adults just feel pretty much like they always have and just have more accumulated "battle scars" from learning and living. I'm not sure if it's because I'm something of a big "kid-at-heart" reader, but I feel much the same I did decades (yikes!) ago and still even like many of the same things and have some of the ame dusty and rusty dreams that I had when I was little... LOL

_Coraline_ is still my favorite (and first) Gaiman book, but this one was time well-spent. I don't regret the investment--whether regarding money or time--at all. As I just finished reading the book a few minutes ago, I imagine this one will stick with me and my brain will continue to "chew" on the concepts for a while, much like _Coraline_ (a young adult novel) and _American Gods_ (another of the author's adult novels).

56 people found this helpful

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Peter J. Graziano

A fantastical trip to growing up

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2018

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It is a wonderful little fantastical story. I can be seen as a young adult (or younger) book, but I'm an old guy and I loved it. It is really a story about growing up, even if you read it as actual events taking place. Throughout this small book, I was wondering if our unnamed main character had a psychotic episode when he was seven years old and is in remission but having a flashback. You decide, but remember that seven years old is an important age. I think that that would be an interpretation by someone who see this as a reality-based book. But I think Lettie, Ginnie Hempstock, and Old Mrs Hempstock are real, or as real as entities such as them (or just her) could be. There are fights with monsters, or maybe internal battles with internal demons. There is even a Freudian Oedipal aspect that is resolved in adulthood, or it really did happened. There is going back to the womb and being reborn. You know from the beginning that it won't be tragic for our seven year old, because he is telling the story as an adult. But it is a sad, sad story with a generous amount of humanity and love. To enjoy it, I think you have to suspend credulity and embrace the story, unless you're some self-important Psychologist looking for mental shadows in every corner, then you will enjoy it for academic reasons. In any event, I put those thoughts aside and read the story on its face and just loved it!

Oh and don't forget to #Save Lucifer

21 people found this helpful

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Whitney Moore

A Thought-Provoking Book!

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2019

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This story has the weight of truth, not unlike the sound of silence beneath the water or the resonance of poetry that goes “below the surface” where you know a thing is true even when you don’t understand it.

In this book, a man returns to a place he had lived when he was seven. Memories have beckoned him back to a pond he had known as “Lettie Hempstock’s ocean.” Lettie, who was eleven at the time, who may have been eleven for ages. Lettie, who had “waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and shawls and clusters of bright stars” like it was a big playroom full of toys. He remembers their exploits together, fantastical and terrifying, seeing the unseen, the “patterns and gates and paths beyond the real.” He remembers that, and he remembers everything: An invisible power that literally wormed its way into his life… Grotesque “hunger birds” ripping at the world and tearing it into nothing… Lettie standing between the shrieking scavengers and their prey (him)…. How a bucket of pond water transformed to become Lettie Hempstock’s ocean. He says it “flowed inside me and filled the entire universe from Egg to Rose…I knew what Egg was—where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void—and I knew where Rose was—the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind.”

To me, that’s knowing something you don’t understand, yet knowing that you know it. Thought-provoking to say the least.

8 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Tim

that is easy to read but touches on deeper themes in a ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2015

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The Ocean at the end of the Lane, is a straightforward book, that is easy to read but touches on deeper themes in a manner that an author like Neil Gaiman would attempt.
It captures the feel of growing up in the country really well, with common places made special and otherworldly simply by their location and a young imagination.
In some ways the story feels really rather sad, a melancholic vein running through, perhaps made more ‘real’ by the fact that the story is told retrospectively by the main protagonist.
A character that would appeal to many who grew up reading books, lost in adventures in their heads, he tells us that he found it hard to make friends as when younger. He seemed happy enough living with his mother, father and sister until a sequence of events brings him into contact with the Hempstock family, the youngest of them, a daughter Hettie, a few years older than himself.
They live in a farm at ‘the end of the lane’ with a pond in the middle of the yard, although Hettie calls it an ocean, a fanciful bit of imagination.
But as with stories of this type there is a lot more going on than initially meets the eye, and the new friends embark on an adventure to stop something dark seeping into the world. It is a threat that gradually escalates until only a sacrifice will appease.
The book draws on archetypes, most importantly in the form of the Hempstock family. There is a power in the form of three women, often shown as three witches although Gaiman makes them so much more in this instance. It is something that the late Terry Pratchett used and can be traced back through literature over the ages, indeed Gaiman himself made use of the trope in has Sandman series.
The Crone (rather unkind), the Mother and the Maiden – a role fulfilled by the Hempstock family. They seem somewhat archaic, but also seem to know a lot more about the world than anyone else. They are also filled with mystery and a gentle cunning. Hettie gives her age as eleven, but it is then established that the important question is how long has she been eleven?
For what is really quite a small book it is hidden with depth, from the characters themselves (especially the Hempstocks), touching on themes of loss, of greed, of suicide, of the feeling that there is more to the world than we could possibly believe, of courage and the willingness to sacrifice the most potent of things for friendship and more. Of horror that can lurk in the most innocuous of places and of the bravery it takes to find it.
It is also very unsettling, having one of the most disturbing scenes I have read in a long time as a father tries to drown his son.
Perhaps it is the mark of desperation falling upon a man finding his world being diminished by financial difficulties, but there is nothing more disturbing or terrifying than finding that one of the two people in the world that should be there for a child no matter what, is a bigger threat than anything else in the world.
It is a book that is both terrifying and wonderful, delivering a conclusion that is fitting and yet downbeat. A genuine telling and a charming read.

23 people found this helpful

P. Mortimer

My husband has been trying to get me to read Good Omens for about twenty years

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 31, 2018

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I bought this three years ago, and can finally now say I’ve read a Neil Gaiman book. My husband has been trying to get me to read Good Omens for about twenty years, and in fact, he read this book shortly after I bought it. However, despite liking Neil Gaiman, he said he found this extremely boring, so I was very much hoping my experience was a more positive one. I can say, I didn’t find it that bad, but I definitely didn’t fall in love with it.

I loved the film Coraline and the TV series of American Gods, but The Ocean at the End of the Lane really didn’t thrill me. I enjoy some fantasy, have been a fan of horror since I was a young girl, and absolutely love magical realism, but for some reason this story didn’t get inside me. Don’t get me wrong, it is well written, and clearly loved by many, but it felt like it was lacking something I can't quite put my finger on.

Maybe it’s unfortunate this was the first book I read by this author. Perhaps I would love his other books, or it’s just best I stick to enjoying his film and TV adaptations instead. I was also expecting an adult book, but this felt much more young adult to me, so that might explain some of my disappointment.

There were a couple of quotes I liked:

“Books were safer than other people anyway.”

“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.”

Oh, and this book did have my mouth watering at the memory of Blackjacks, which were one of my favourite childhood sweets. Yum!

I have Neverwhere and Stardust on my to be read pile, so perhaps I’ll give one of them a go at some point. Who knows, maybe I’ll eventually get round to reading my husband’s old copy of Good Omens one day too.

7 people found this helpful

Rebecca Carter

A beautifully written fable for adults

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 15, 2016

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I loved this book. Although only my second Neil Gaiman book he's definitely becoming one of my favourite authors. I just love his style of writing, the way it makes you feel and his ability to transport you to other times and places. His genre is unlike most other authors; it's his own. A mix of fantasy, paranormal, magical realism, adventure, adult/dark fairy tales and a smidgeon of subtle horror (minus lots of gore) blended with witty dialogue.

This book has a dreamlike quality to it, you are never quite sure what is real and what isn't. He manages to perfectly capture the essence of what it's like to be a child; the adventures, the insecurity, the not knowing, the hopelessness, the magic. The shadows on walls morphing into monsters in our minds, the dark of nighttime playing tricks on us - something we can all relate to and remember.
The writing is just beautiful, he manages to conjure up such vivid imagery with his creativity. The story is pretty short but quite sweet and simple. A middle aged man returns to his childhood home and is hit by memories of when he was 7 and his friendship with 11 year old (or infinitely old) Lettie, and what events were triggered after a man was found dead in the lane. You really need to read it to discover the magic for yourself, without knowing any details or where the story is taking you.

Apart from a few scenes this book could quite easily have been a kids book, well maybe an older child's book. I don't mean that in a bad way, but it could almost be a very dark and slightly more grown up Roald Dahl kind of book. Maybe because it's told mainly from a 7 year olds perspective, but i can imagine it would have both terrified and fascinated me as a child. As it is it makes a fantastic dark kind of fairy tale/bed time reading book for adults. The only problem is being able to put it down at a reasonable hour to attempt enough hours sleep before work!

8 people found this helpful

HolmesFan

Cracking book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2020

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I bought this for my son as he's into Terry Prachett and I wanted him to try out a new author. I ended up reading it instead (he's yet to read it) and I loved it. I couldn't put it down. The man has a terrific imagination, conjuring up believable characters and incredible situations. Who doesn't want to sit at that farmhouse table drinking the creamiest milk ever tasted and eating the most delicious shepherd's pie? He intersperses this safe and comforting place with terrible danger and dark forces beautifully, so you can never truly feel at ease. This book stayed with me long after I had read it and I recommend it to loads of people, but I won't lend mine out, they have to get their own copies!

2 people found this helpful

Little Bookness Lane

Fantastically bizarre. Worth a read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2014

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It appears from the reviews that this book's a little like Marmite - you'll either like it, or you just won't click with it.

If you like a quirky, bizarre story then you've come to the right place. You know those sort of stories that immerse you in a surreal fantasy world that could just possibly exist alongside an everyday real one? Whilst people's lives intertwine with it, oblivious to its existence? Then yes, this is DEFINATELY for you.

It's dreamlike and slightly nuts in places, but altogether highly original. Yet it's told in a clever, matter-of-fact way that it actually makes it strangely plausible. It's a fantasy-fairylike-tale with a whopping, great punch throughout.

I must mention that the intimidation of the young boy by a truly vile villain, together with the 'angry birds' scene later in the book are captured in a perfectly sinister manner, painting quite a graphic image in your mind.

And I'll admit, I got myself lost a couple of times with the changing story between the past (the young boy) and the present (the boy grown up), particularly toward the end, but a quick re-read of the chapter put me straight. That was my fault entirely and not the book - therefore, I would recommend giving it your 100% attention to fully appreciate it, it would be a crime not to.

This is the first book I've read by Neil Gaiman and it's left me wanting to read more. 4.5 stars out of 5.

8 people found this helpful