Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman has repeatedly gifted the world with products arising creatively out of his imagination, experience and integration of world myths and stories, and this book is no exception. I was genuinely unable to put it down, as the world and universe through the senses of our seven year old protagonist unraveled themselves to us under the guidance of otherworldly energies and beings. I particularly found it refreshing that even through the eyes of a young child, or perhaps because of it, that there was no clear and rigid distinction between good and evil.

This clearly represents an empathy arising out of a protean understanding of the dynamics in the interactions of things conveyed by the author. There is organisation, there is order, there are universal rules, yet there are also deeply felt emotions, chaos within these frameworks and an eternal mystery to human beings that talks beyond the realms of logic and perhaps more to a universal faith in the infinite Unknown.

And this is what can make childhood such a terrifying time especially without wise adult guidance. I was moved to to tears on a number of occasions, because of the skill Gaiman has in evoking such vivid imagery and sensate emotions through the medium of the written word. I was taken back also to my own childhood, before iPads and the like, whereby ones escape from the demands and at times cruel nature of the real world, was through reading.

Thank you Neil Gaiman for again reminding me that reading a good book is akin to travelling the inner world, a landscape oft forgotten in this modern world of attention deficit and constant drive. This truly is a book for anyone who has ever been seven years old.