Old Mrs Hempstock, with her “wigglers”, “fleas”, and “varmints”, has something of the BFG or Ma Larkin about her dialogue, but even that gives way to a much less friendly, more rarefied lexis at a pivotal point, showing that even grandmotherly comfort can turn terrifying at a stroke.Ĭrucially, like Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, or Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (both tales kicked swirling up from the ocean floor of Western kids’ fiction into the eddy of Gaiman’s story), the novel isn’t sentimental about childhood, but nostalgic. There’s none of Neverwhere’s sardonic Douglas Adams humour, indeed, the only real source of levity is the Hempstock trio’s folksy, idiomatic speech.

It says much that for a story about a young boy, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is possibly Gaiman’s least playful work to date. The most appropriate comparisons perhaps, are to Patrick Ness’ deeply sad A Monster Calls, or those Ghibli films of Hayao Miyazaki that knit interactions with unexplained worlds and creatures around the perimeters of a childhood home. For a novel about ageless, world-stitching neighbours, alien realms, and spirits both malevolent and pitiable, that’s no small achievement.Īt a little over two-hundred pages, it’s amongst Gaiman’s shorter novels, and half the size of his expansive American Gods. Gaiman’s cultural touchstones – Smash! comics, Blackjack sweets, ITV’s How – may fit a sixties childhood, but so much about the narrator’s perspective and experiences cleaves to the common terrors and rare comforts of being a kid, it becomes almost universal.

The ocean at the end of the lane novel