“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 look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
Sometime during the course of growing up, we lose that connection to the magic of childhood. It’s a loss of innocence and imagination that seems to happen gradually. By the time we realize it’s gone, it’s too late to recapture. The Ocean at the End of the Lane eloquently captures the wonders of childhood in this surprisingly dark novel from Neil Gaiman.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane opens with the adult narrator returning to his childhood home for a funeral. His childhood memories are rekindled during his visit home, especially in relation to a neighbor girl with whom he played as a child.
“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.”
Childhood memories have a magical quality to them. Everything seemed bigger as a child, and there seemed to be a touch of magic to the unexplainable phenomena of the world. Is that pond at the end of the lane really an ocean? Or did it just seem that way as a child?
Neil Gaiman is in absolute peak form in this beautifully told story about reconnecting with the magic and imagination of childhood. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told like a fairy tale, because that’s what childhood is, isn’t it?
This is a story of friendship and sacrifice, a story of lost innocence, and a story of the wondrous power of imagination. The narrator gradually discovers that his childhood memories may not be what they seem.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is also surprisingly dark, including a scene where the narrator extracts a magical worm from his foot that will make even the darkest of grimdark fans squirm.
I can’t think of another book that captures the magic of childhood so beautifully, evoking so many emotions of wonder and excitement, of love and loss. Five very enthusiastic stars for this dark and magical masterpiece that is The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
5/5
