I don’t know what it is about Neil Gaiman, but I like him. Even though all his stories are more or less the same basic premise – a man discovers something about the world that is extraordinary, and through this discovery, finds that he himself is extraordinary – I continue to like his stories.

I first read American Gods in college – my sophomore year, I think. My two best friends had read it, and they liked it, and I wanted to have something to talk about with them in terms of books. I was never quite up to their speed, reading-wise. They were much bigger into fantasy than I was, and they read a lot more than I did (and I read a lot by comparison of most kids I knew). Anyway, I liked American Gods. It’s currently being turned into a series by HBO.

Other Neil Gaiman stories were in my future. I went on to read Stardust, Neverwhere (my favorite by him), Anansi Boys and earlier this year, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

The story follows the unnamed narrator as he visits his hometown for a funeral and the neighbors he had when he was a kid, and he remembers his childhood.

Basically, a specific death allows a supernatural being access to the normal world the narrator inhabits, and things go sideways from there. He meets Lettie Hempstock, who becomes his friend, and her family. The ocean at the end of the lane is Lettie’s ocean.

The usual fantasy stuff applies to this story (as it does in all Gaiman’s stories) – binding spirits, evil things, supernatural events, etc… although the basic premise of the story is slightly different here. There isn’t that much that is extraordinary about the narrator, but Lettie and her family were extraordinary. And he did no magic, but Lettie and her family did.

What I really liked about this story is the disconnect between childhood and adulthood, as I think Gaiman put it (when I was reading about the book). The adult narrator frequently forgets the events of his childhood until he returns to the neighbors’ farm multiple times. When he leaves, he forgets. The events seem fantastic to him when he was a kid, the way most things seem fantastic when we’re kids. And the explanations for things that adults have are not the explanations children have.

The magic of childhood is captured well in this book – and the way that you somehow forget stuff you shouldn’t or at the time you don’t think you ever could, the way time just makes the details fuzzier and fuzzier, until those things are gone.

This book is Gaiman being Gaiman. Anyone looking for anything new or groundbreaking isn’t going to find it here. I enjoyed it anyway.

Tagged: authors: neil gaiman, books: american gods, books: neverwhere, books: stardust, books: the ocean at the end of the lane, genre: fantasy