Rashmi bookmarks “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”

I actually had to wait nearly two months to check this book out of the library … and I see what the hype is all about. I count The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman, among one of the better, more intense reading experiences of my life.

When the book starts off - with the narrator taking a quick side trip from the funeral he has come to attend at his childhood hometown - the one overwhelming sense I had was that of nostalgia. What was ‘eerie’ about that was the fact that even though the narrator was not describing the kind of place I have ever lived in, or the kind of people I have grown up with, the power of his descriptive journey was so strong, I was getting emotional about the literal and metaphorical trip down memory lane.

The story however does not remain in that earthly mode for very long. As the narrator remembers his childhood years - mainly his interaction with the family of Lettie Hempstock who had said that the pond behind her house was an ocean - weird bits and pieces of memories come to his mind. Starting with the dream that ended with a shilling in his throat, and the walk in the forest that ended with a worm in his foot, the story takes on that fantastical and supernatural hue that is always at the heart of Gaiman’s creativity.

This work was slightly reminiscent of Poe, in that the story wove together elements of horror and poetry so very beautifully. The saga of Ursula Monkton’s attack and elimination by “varmints” in the forest, and the subsequent ripping of the very threads of the fabric of the universe was one of the high points of this story. Another one was, undoubtedly, the sequence of events following the narrator’s dip into the mysterious bucket of ocean water:

“Lettie Hempstock’s ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe from Egg to Rose. I knew that. I knew what Egg was - where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void - and I knew where Rose was - that peculiar crinkling of space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next big bang, which would be now, I knew now, nothing of the kind.”

This was a brilliant story that entered a beautiful and nostalgic real world - and then used that as a lift-off point for a world of endlessly imaginative fantasy, and I loved it. At the end of it all, there was an overwhelming sense of, “I just had the weirdest dream ever”.

… Or was it all just a dream?