The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman, 2013
Fantasy HorrorContemporary fiction
A man drives back to the pond at the end of his childhood lane, and remembers the year the ordinary world let something else through. A grown man's remembering voice carries you through wonder and dread at a quick, lyrical pace.
Feels like wonder, dread and nostalgia. About memory, freedom and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you have a taste for childhood memory mixed with fantasy and a little horror. Be warned that some scenes carry real dread and put a child in danger, so it is not a comfort read throughout.
Why read it
It gives you a short, vivid crossing between ordinary family life and something older and stranger, and the pull of memory stays with you.
A page from the book
The moment you decide something strange never happened.
I wondered where the illusion of the second moon had come from, but I only wondered for a moment, and then I dismissed it from my thoughts. Perhaps it was an afterimage, I decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in my mind, for a moment, so powerfully that I believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded into the past like a memory forgotten, or a shadow into the dusk. Neil Gaiman.Gaiman began it as a short story for his wife, Amanda Palmer, about her childhood; his own Sussex boyhood took it over, and it became his first adult novel in eight years.
Books that feel like this
More by Neil Gaiman
Coraline
Neil Gaiman, 2002
A girl discovers a door to a parallel home with a button-eyed mother who wants to keep her. A dark fairy tale about courage and wanting.
American Gods
Neil Gaiman, 2001
A newly released convict takes a job with a mysterious conman and discovers that old gods, brought to America by immigrants, are preparing for war with the new.
Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman, 2017
Neil Gaiman retells the Norse myths as a linked cycle: petty, powerful gods, a clever Loki, and a world that knows it is ending.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Ocean at the End of the Lane for me?
- You may like it if you have a taste for childhood memory mixed with fantasy and a little horror. Be warned that some scenes carry real dread and put a child in danger, so it is not a comfort read throughout.
- What is The Ocean at the End of the Lane like?
- A grown man's remembering voice carries you through wonder and dread at a quick, lyrical pace. Feels like wonder, dread and nostalgia. About memory, freedom and power.
- What should I read after The Ocean at the End of the Lane?
- If you liked The Ocean at the End of the Lane, try Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel), Ready Player One (Ernest Cline) and Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman).
A taste of the feed
A man buys supplies for a disaster and grieves the ordinary world mid-aisle.
“Laura,” he began. “Laura.” He thought it better to speak to her directly and it was already almost eleven fifty, there wasn’t time for this. Filling the cart with more food, moving quickly through this bread-and-flower-scented world, this almost-gone place, thinking of Frank in his 22nd floor apartment, high up in the snowstorm with his insomnia and his book project, his day-old New York Times and his Beethoven. Jeevan wanted desperately to reach him. He decided to call Laura later, changed his mind and called the home line while he was standing by the checkout counter, mostly because he didn’t want to make eye contact with the clerk.
Station Eleven · Emily St. John Mandel
What a sitcom family can give a kid who has none.
Sitting alone in the dark, watching the show on my laptop, I always found myself imagining that I lived in that warm, well-lit house, and that those smiling, understanding people were my family. That there was nothing so wrong in the world that we couldn’t sort it out by the end of a single half-hour episode (or maybe a two-parter, if it was something really serious).
Ready Player One · Ernest Cline
The difference between a building being destroyed and a building being taken away.
The building smashed down to the ground. I watched it happen. The seven-story apartment building was there one moment, and then it was gone. But it hadn’t disappeared. I was looking right at Mrs. Parsons when it went down. It was like the building was a massive tin can that had been crushed by a giant cosmic boot. I saw it, and I heard it. Wind rushed at me, and it was instantly dark outside. The streetlamp just to my left was gone. The buildings all around me were gone. The cars on the street were gone, too.
Dungeon Crawler Carl · Matt Dinniman
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