A Review of Neil Gaiman's "The Ocean at the End of the Lane"

A Review of Neil Gaiman's

 "The Ocean at the End of the Lane"

by Jean Woest

            There are few living authors that have such a long lists of accolades or such a fierce fan presence as Neil Gaiman. Present in every imaginable medium (novel, graphic novel, film, television, picture books, children's books, young adult books, literary novels, short story, and video game) Gaiman has left an indelible mark on literature already.

            And then he decided to write a short story-- that became a novel-- called "The Ocean at the End of the Lane".

            It's not a very thick book. It can be read through in a few hours, though it calls for-- almost demands-- a closer, more paced reading. Because in that small space is contained not only the real, visceral and fragile presence of childhood, but also the echoes of the after effects of trauma and the questions this raises around memory.

            At face value it is the story of a memory. A memory that has been lost and is then regained. A memory of childhood horrors, of broken promises, and of magic. It is the memory of a child. Told by a man. And this is very important.

            Children see more than adults see, and so recall things that adults never remember. But at the same time, adults have records that stand under the support of witnesses and receipts, records of things that disprove childhood memories. There is real tension here. And there is so much at stake. This is the crux-- the tensions-- that Gaiman plays with.

            Some authors would chose a side and argue for it, build straw man opponents and knock them down. Others would show both sides equally, leaving their readers floating listlessly at the end in an unending moral vacuum. Gaiman somehow manages to do neither, and that is precisely the thing that causes this reviewer to keep rereading the work, to try and figure out how exactly an author can refuse to take a side, and yet still leave his readers grounded firmly in the belief that the good won, or rather, that the good endured the trials. Or rather, that there is still good in the world, even if we cannot recall it's presence. It's echoes rebound through our daily lives, without a second thought to the shout that started them.

            On top of this vastly unhelpful and abstract note on the theme, Gaiman also weaves a wonderful tale with stunning imagery, beautiful characterization, and the very visceral feel that the reader is being pushed back forcefully into 1969 Sussex. It has the texture of a time capsule, with the magic of a fairy tale, and the optimism of a Shakespearian comedy.

            There are many books calling for attention at this time of the year. But Ocean is one of the ones that deserve that attention. It is a quick read if you're willing to read it only once. But no one reads it just once. To do so would defeat the purpose of the story. The purpose, to remember.

You can buy The Ocean at the End of the Lane HERE

Or other works by Neil Gaiman HERE

Also, here's the link to Neil Gaiman's Twitter and his Blog

Stumbling Into a Rabbit Hole

Stumbling Into a Rabbit Hole

I pick up my coffee from the end of the cafe bar, wink at the cute barista, and turn to leave. Except I don’t. Or rather I do. Well, you see, its a bit hard to explain. I turned and tripped down the rabbit hole again. One moment in a cafe in Prague. The next moment, falling face first, streaming coffee behind me like the Exxon Valdez, passing through the ripping currents of time and space. Or maybe just insanity.

I plunge into the shade of mossy green that smells of wetness and muddiness and dankness and the bursting forth of life into itself over and over again. The ouroboros green coils about me and pushes me to the surface. I break through the emerald and take a hard breath of the icy air. I am sticking vertically out of a horizontal mountain dangling from the side of a cliff set over an abyss careening down wildly between two distant peaks. The navel of the world curls and ripples far beneath me and to my right. I still have the coffee cup. It is somehow still full. The navel of the world breathes up with salty, pink lips that say “Drink me.”

So I poured the coffee down and burnt it’s sickly red tongue.

So the world spat me out.

I flew in the haphazard, electric zings of a paper airplane being seesawed by the fickle breeze and strange momentum. I shifted in sharp turns, that made me feel like a stick shift stuck in first gear trying to fight to five. And screeching hiss of a buzz saw on the raw exposed nerve of a tooth filled my skull and poured hot pain into my jaw. I bit down, hard.

I bit myself into enlightenment.

On an orange beach under an orange sky with an orange sea and and orange sea birds and an orange sun that blazed like the ticking hands of a clock, relentless and deaf to pleas for mercy. I held my coffee cup up, the only white thing in a world of orange. And the world fled from it, from the strange color it could not contain. I think every soul in that world perished because of the color white on my coffee cup.

Consciousness slowly seeps like melted gold over an exposed eye, into each and every one of my cells. My liver cells ask one another why, why after so many years of hard and unappreciated work, why now must they again sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Why must they die in order for the whole body to live? Is it not debasing for them? Are not all cells made equal, all from the same stemcells, all created from the same egg and sperm. Why then ought liver cells to die so that brain cells can live and gorge themselves more on caffeine and alcohol and take all the glory for the body’s doing. Other cells in the body listen to the liver cells and some begin to believe, specifically half of the kidneys and a small group of lung tissue groups. But that is enough. Enough to start a revolution. Enough to form a company of Les Amis. Enough for them to kill me.

I douse my body in fiery coffee, the liver cells, in who I am also present, scream in anguish, while fat coated brain cells, my consciousness just as present, trip wildly on a cocaine ride of colors and images and sounds, each of them experiencing the rabbit hole for themselves. My body is agitated, and my consciousness pushed down further into the atoms, bursting thoughts and imagination like bolts of lighting as particles crush against each other like the hot throes of sex. A proton, trailed lamely by a heartbroken electron, crushes into the nearest neutron without thought or consent and destroys it, another heartbroken electron is added to it’s wake of despair.

An ice cold moment of thought triggers the end of the world, when I roll up my empathy inside myself and said factually that emoting on inanimate or unconscious matter does not make a better universe. There is a natural order to this world after all.

I become fumes, flowing downhill, trailing toward some center of gravity beyond my scope or sight. I collect bits and pieces of myself as I fall, more and more of me seems to strive towards that center. A larger collection of myself than I am, grabs the me I am, and pulls me in to be added to me. I know it is where I belong but I also feel myself vaporizing as my autonomy is stolen into the whole. I become a whisper. I become the conscience. Or if not the conscience then something opposite it.

I begin to take on my shape and my shape is smoke, a thick greasy black pillar with lines of lavender and the heady scent of opium burning acidic at my back. I collected harder and grow more pieces as I near the source, which I can now see is a the bowl of a pipe. I collected like flowing smoke, a cinder burning backwards as the smoke coils and flows like water, filling in the spaces of my black body.

Then slowly I start to glow until I am ribbed by bright orange seams, Bright orange like the orange world I destroyed and like the setting sun, when seen through a dust storm. I brighten and glow until I am a firebird of life, the power of combustion is like the sweetest feeling of peace and absolute security in the universe. My reverse incarnation draws more and more smoke into my fiery frame, and I feel a wooden center, untouched by fire, begin to take form. Water is mixed in this white smoke and it curls into my pores, for I am porous now.

In a final smolder, the fire passed down from me as if I am undressing, sliding a silk gown down my bare frame and I stand naked and wooden. I am made of wood, sitting in the bowl of the pipe. A fat finger fishes me out and passes me to a fat, yellow gloved hand. That hand passes me to a fat green gloved hand, and then to a fat blue gloved hand. I pass through every shade of every color of glove until I reach gloves with are the colors of sadness and gloves the colors of shock when you are caught with your pants down for the first time by your parents. And then there were gloves the color of music which made me weep. Finally, I had been passed up by all of the caterpillar’s hands and was facing it’s fat face. It had no eyes. No nose. No ears. Only a mouth and a million hands.

“Did you fetch my coffee as I asked?” The Caterpillar asked, taking a deep nibble into my calve.

“I’m sorry, no.” I look at the now empty coffee cup.

“What is the point of you!” It yells and hurls me against the side of an iron flower, the razer petals cutting deep gashes into my face.

“I’m sorry. I’ll do better.” I wiped my bloodied face and where I touched the blood turned to brilliant carnation petals.

“You do that.” The caterpillar took a deep drag from his hookah bowl. Then let it out in a massive pink cloud, “Well, what are you waiting for!”

The pink cloud engulfed me, consumed me, I coughed, I fell forward, and my hand splashed into the spilled coffee. Which was cold by now. I heard the cute barista gasp behind me, asking if I was okay. I wiped a last red carnation petal off my cheek and ask her to remake my coffee. Again.

The Doormouse Talks to Himself

Kourtney was a lovie, and lovies never die. So she did her face up pretty and drew on a lipstick smile. And stepped out of her window, over rain-slate coloured Paris. And broke her femur and her fingers, when she hit the concrete street. The men who passed so brusquely, stopped here and there to kick. They broke her nose and crushed her eye, and one boot smeared her lips. But Kourney was a lovie, and lovies take revenge. They do not cry from button eyes, they simply rise again and again. And again.

When Marcus left his building, his suit was much too thin. To keep his large frame held so tightly here within. The seems upon his shoulders, split open wide and white. And once his pants burst from his frame he stalked as such a sight. For not flesh or bone within him honed but rather, there dwelled there. A hurricane blasting fierce and red streaks of blood here and there. The people nearest Marcus, had but a chance to shout. Before he burst, and ate them whole, and like a light gone out.

Turn now the page to Jamie that rascal of  a jack, young Jamie who lived all Jamie's life inside of Jamie's hat. The hat was square and yellow, with an orange sort of smell. And Jamie never knew another, until the day Jamie fell. And tumbled hard upon the ground, head over toe so brisckly. Jamie smeared across what was left of Marcus who had ate Kourney. And Jamie covered in Marcus and Kourtney then began to cry. And ask for Jamie's mummy and ask for a lullaby. But Jamie's mummy did not answer. Jamie saw another figure step out. For the dark of the night was the fourth person there, and it took Jamie, Marcus, and Kourtney, ate them all without a shout.

Snippet of the Week: My Notes on the Narration of "A Long, Dry Summer"

Notes on the Narration of "A Long, Dry Summer"

What use is a frame tale? In Ocean at the End of the Lane, the point of the frame tale is to set the character in the real world before launching into the past. In Ocean it is also to make emphatically clear that the character is recalling these events as a child would. And that many of the things the child narrator memory is recalling may in fact not have been truths at all. That the narrator is unfaithful, or at the very least, untrustworthy.

What does having the frame tale of Rodney in the barn do?

It allows me to give Rodeny's POV only. It allows the perspective that exclude other perspectives. It allows that there are things happening that Rodney has no clue about, which builds tension. It allows the audience to know more than the character, at times.  It allows the telling to be part of the tale. It brings the teller into the story and makes the story closer to home. It gives the narrator more voice and personality and allows that to be expressed in a much closer telling. The drawbacks to such a present narrator is the sacrifice in the style. It is not nearly as smooth or as quick, but much more personable. Which is one of the keys to successful humor. Part of it comes from the teller being a participant in the story and the humour.

So there's a lot to be said for first person frame tales looking back. But what about switching POV in the second chapter and last chapter? It makes for a much more impact ending. We pull out of Rodney at the end. We see him from the outside. We are no longer privy to his thoughts. It is a slow exhalation from the prose. Which if that is the case means there is not as sudden of a break from the story. There is a greater sense of completion. It does make for a bit of an awkward beginning. Unless the beginning starts with descriptions of what the character is seeing, and then slides into using the first person pronoun. If done right it will be a minor bump and adjustment. If done improperly it will be too vague (the reader will not get that perspectives have switched) or too sudden (it will throw readers out who will have to reacclimatize to the story). So a careful balance must be taken at the turning over.

So maybe having description, which matches descriptions up until now. And then maybe having a reference (very quick-- eg, "but this was all year before I would end up in this barn telling this story"-- just a quick reminder to readers that what they are about to read is in fact being told to them by the guy currently sitting in front of the  horse in the barn) and then moving on. And then later, maybe a chapter or two later, referencing it one more time. Just to drive the point home in case someone missed it. And then move on. Don't dwell too long.

How does humour play into this? Well, if Rodney is telling the story he can make small asides that are funny (eg. "--even though all we ever saw of madame le roux's patients was that they were all men and would come up for quick fifteen minute psychic sessions and would leave with wide smiles on their faces-- what she did up there was truly a mystery.") but also in making the character be purposefully slow (eg "I was a simpler man back then and if there was one thing I knew it was that if you two people went naked into a room together, eventually a baby would come out with them"). Both theses attempts at humour fail miserably. But its the core concept. Its not taking the narrator seriously. Its about letting Rodney be ridiculous. Letting him comment on ridiculous things but also letting his commentary be ridiculous. Its about letting him interact with equally ridiculous people.

Where does the line between the grotesque and the ridiculous come in? This is very important. Because the line is so faint. It is the same way there is a line between detail and gratuitous blood and gore. Or where the faint line exists between tasteful sexualization and fantastic erotica. The line is faint and everyone will draw it differently. (meaning some people will see the ridicule as mockery and vice versa. Some people will not catch the humour or the jokes.)

To minimize missing it, and minimize seeming mean spirited, it becomes imperative to make sure there is an equal amount of ridicule spread around. Everyone has something ridiculous about them. Everyone says stupid things. Does stupid things. The stupid things however, should be endearing. And then there can be comedy of errors. Physical comedy. Dark humour- meaning specifically that something grotesque happens that makes us smile-- eg, someone dies overtly graphically-- e.g. splattering on the ground after being thrown off a balcony, followed by the person asking for another helping of casserole while the room reacts accordingly.

So it means keeping a light mood. Whenever the mood gets too serious there should be inserted a physical joke. Or a situational irony. Something to make the reader smile.

Rodney's perspective of himself. This is important. Rodney needs to view himself very seriously. But his words and actions should not be serious. Meaning--- "Mondays have been universally declared to be the worst days of the week. I always thought that wasn't very fair. It wasn't Monday's fault for chosing to be the start of the work week. And being the horrible person I was, I found a secret joy in the torment of the rest of humanity in trying to cope with Mondays. I will admit, on occasion, I would take wicked pleasure in making other people's Mondays as miserable as possible. Like I said, I am not the nicest person."

There is slight humour in this. But only slight. The problem comes from the fact that Rodeny's being self depricating. But maybe this could be played off as him being conscious of his self deprication. So purhaps if it were clear that Rodney wants the readers to feel sorry for him, then it could force enough distance between him and the readers that his attempts become funny and pointless instead.

There is another intresting thought. Is Rodney trying to make us feel sorry for him? Does he want us to take his side? Everyone feels sorry for themselves. Rodney is a manipulator. We have to see it, not outright, but sideways, in the ways he interacts with people. Maybe have him have a mantra that expresses this when added to his other actions. This would be difficult to do, because it demands that readers think about whether they can trust Rodney's tale. But this level of reading would make it deep. This level of reading would be the deeper element on top of just the funny story about a serial killer in the making.

Ray Bradburry's "A Farewell Summer" is all about transformation-- about resisting transfromation, about forcing transformation, and about the inevitability of transformation. It happens to all of us. The penis leaves the old man and goes inhabit the boy instead, transforming him into a man. This idea about the inevitability of transformation is the key I am taking away from "A Farewell Summer".

The idea is that "A Long, Dry Summer" is meant to take the concept of the inevitablity of transformation and apply it to a darker scenario. When the current of transformation changes towards the darker side of things, such as a serial killer in the making, can we still fight it. Or, like in A Farewell Summer, is it inevitable once we get onto the road. Is it fair to judge someone who has been forced onto the path by no choice of their own, and must now follow it to its end? Should we still only judge them by the sum total of their deeds? Or should we include the intent of their act, even if we can only gain their intent from them.

This is why the level in which we believe Rodney is important. If we feel he wants us to be sorry for him, then the intent element has been compromised. Rodney wants us to feel sorry for him because he is actual guilty but trying to make excuses by arguing intent.

The other reason the first person is so important to the story is because all the excuses Rodney makes for serial killing is his own then. It won't be reflected back on me, as the author. I mean, a lot of people will still, because they cannot separate fiction from reality. But if I make it explicitly clear, maybe towards the end. Maybe when he murders the girl and he's justifying himself. Or apologizing to the reader. Or something similar. Basically he pushed the reader out of the story for a second. Makes them remember that he is himself, and I am not him. And that this story is really his own defense. This protects me as the author, and forces us to ask questions about how much of a serial killer's defense regarding intent we can believe.

So having a first person narrative for this story is important for several reasons. One, it makes the story's narrator more personable. We have to like Rodney at first. He has to be quirky, but likeable. He has to do things which makes us smile.  Then, it allows more humour through the way the narrator tells things, through asides as well as through limited knowledge. After that, it allows us to be more invested in Rodney, and when it doesn't take himself so seriously, it allows us to step back enough to not take any of the story too seriously (since it's all coming through him-- who doesn't take himself seriously) which allows for a lot of the dark things to come across as dark comedy instead. Finally, it allows us to step back from Rodney at the end when he defends himself, to ask ourselves if we believe his version of events. And to also ask ourselves how we can truly ever know intent. So that when we leave Rodney's head and we can only observe, no longer know for certain, it closes very solidly while leaving lingering questions in the reader's mind. So it makes the book haunting.

A list of things Rodney's voice must achieve:

           

            -In first few chapters, establish that he is telling this in the barn (eg all is memory)

            -In first third of book, make him loveable (endearing, we smile even if he's wrong

            -In middle of book, his voice has to be self deprecating

            -In end of book, he has to become defensive, making us more alert as reader

            -Througout book he should never take himself too seriously

How to make list happen:

1. In First Few Chapter Establish He Is Telling This Presently, looking back

            -Have the break in POV

            -Have him reference that he is currently telling (midway chp 2)

            -Have him reference that he is in barn right now (midway chp 3)

2. In First 1/3 of book make him loveable/endearing

What makes a character lovable? When they have certain mannerism which could be annoying (Hermoine's bookishness, Ron's dread of schoolwork). They have to be identifiable. They have to have a common human experience and a common human reaction to the experience that makes people connect with them on a deep and personal level. Common human experiences: being awkward in social situations (needs to be more specific), getting lost and trying to find your way, maybe having to ask for directions without finding anyone to help (better), being approached by someone very attractive and acting like a fool, being confused for a worker/employee of some sort and acting along to avoid embarrassment, etc. Being overtaken or frustrated and being despondent about it. Makes us sympathize with them because we've been there.

            What happens during first third of book?

           

            -The first two murders-- The accident and the sloppy???

            -The cast is introduced-- Maybe Rodney moves into the Belmont

            -Setting is being established

--Incorporating the elements of loving/endearing with the elements of first 1/3:

            -Rodney moved into building, mistaken for bellboy, social akward sit

            -Rodney meets attractive people, unsure of how to act, bumbles

            -Rodney gets lost on way to place, has to ask for directions

            -Rodney gets pooped on by a bird on a Monday

3. In Middle of Book, voice becomes self depricating (eg, doesn't take himself too serious

            -Comments made aside ("There I went again, opening my big mouth")

            -Tone shifts slightly (I was having a bad day--> So I went to wallow in self pity till I felt better)

            NEED TWO MORE WAYS OF EXPRESSING THIS

4. End of book becomes more defensive.

            -Makes excuses ("She forced me to, I had no choice)

            -Calls readers attention (I know what you must be thinking of me)

            -Attempts justification (I'm not a bad person)

            -Tries to make personable but fails (what would you do if you were me?)

5. Throughout book Rodney cannot take himself too seriously

            --When he has deep profound moments a bird poops on him, or it starts to rain hard, or a cat catches a mouse in front of him and rips it to pieces during tender moments

            -- Rodney can interrupt his own scenes, to remind readers that he is going to do something stupid, a la Emperor's New Groove

            --Rodney can encounter something that we, as audience of the future, knows about, but that he dismisses, a la Monty Python

            --Rodney can encounter something that everyone else accepts as normative, eg, eating something unsanitary, or gross, and have a gross out moment similar to what the audience would have, again a la Emperor's New Groove

            -- Rodney can have dramatic exits and then has to slink back when he remembers he forgot something-- a la everything ever written for comedy