Neil Gaiman

I finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane and I’m a little confused to say that… I didn’t think it was as mind blowing as people told me it was?

I got this book under the recommendation of my sister, who absolutely loved it. I didn’t read the back cover, I didn’t look it up on the internet, she didn’t tell me exactly (or at all) what it was about. It was just one of those blind reads that I like doing. All I knew is that it was written by Gaiman, and that is good enough for me.

Or so I thought.

I had a great time. Some passages really captured me. The mystery about the boy’s name is super cool (and actually it’s not a mystery, it’s just a fact), but… I don’t know. I think it takes more than a Nameless Protagonist to make a book mind blowing.

I really appreciate all the female characters Mr. Gaiman gave to us in this book. They’re unique in their own way. The Maiden/Mother/Crone triad represented by the Hempstock women was an excellent touch, and even though I wanted to kill the Younger Sister, I also liked her as a functioning character in the story.

The details about certain aspects, such as the cats in the story, the faeric atmosphere surrounding this novella, the easy-reading of the narrative (a characteristic of Mr. Gaiman’s works) was all very pleasing, but the core of the story, or at least how this core was delivered, really bugged me.

I swear to god, I wanted to love this book. That didn’t pan out.

In the end and in its essence, this book felt like a lot of catchphrases jumbled together into one narrative to give that feeling that adults love: the romantization of childhood, since we adults love a good nostalgia. It was like reading “Oh, look at how a child’s innocence and imagination is so much better than being an Adult, here, let me show you The Childhood Secrets™ by writing A Lot Of Sentences That Are Supposed to Be Impactful And Quotable On Social Media”.

Continue with spoilers >>

For the first third of the book, I kept waiting for the POV to come back to Adult Protagonist, until I gave up and realized that yes, I was stuck with this seven year old boy.

Fine, I thought, I can take it.

So until half of the book I was still trying to accept that that boy was my protagonist. When I finally settled for him, the reading was more fluid for me.

The episode in the bathtub was really unsettling and impactful, which was the entire point of it, and it made me dislike the father for the rest of the story, because according to “the thing that called itself Ursula Monkton”, she didn’t make anyone do anything. So there’s that, but I’m not sure how trustful she could be here.

And the cats. I really appreciate the fondness in which Gaiman describes the multiple cats featured in this book, and the relationship between them and their humans. In a time where the world of entertainment loves to portray cats as evil, mean, animals and associate them with unhappy, lonely, worthy-of-pity people (I shiver as I remember Grey’s Anatomy, my last exposure to this type of portrayal), having Mr. Gaiman’s take on the wonderful relationship the Boy had with his cats, and even the peaceful way he described the fog-colored cat of the Hempstocks, was really, really nice.

Like I said earlier, I really liked the Hempstocks, obviously. They’re the entire story for me, I felt compelled into searching the web about where Gaiman got the inspiration to write them, I thought it was a clever move to never give the boy a name, and I felt very enraptured in the action scenes, which isn’t usually the case for me, but overall… I didn’t love the book to understand why it got so many nominations and prizes. My life didn’t change because of it, my views are still the same.

Oh, and one last thing: the protagonist forgetting everything. Man, that’s some cheap trick right there. It’s an unfair and cheap narrative trick that always pissed me off (most notably in Doctor Who, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN), and I stand by what I think here. The only thing worse than that is the “and then he woke up”.

Anyway.

This book was a nice ride, full of ups and downs.

I’m giving this 3 stars because I have a lot of mixed feelings about it, but overall, it was good.… (more)

Contains two full story arcs, World's End (issues 51-56) and The Kindly Ones (Issues 57-69). Also includes a brief tour of Morpheus's castle from a 1993 Vertigo promotional issue.

World's End starts out appearing to be another collection of standalone stories within a Canterbury Tales-ish frame, but the tales slyly build on Gaiman's themes and strongly foreshadow the big event to come in The Kindly Ones. Each tale is in a different genre and illustration style, and each is enjoyable in its own right.

The Kindly Ones is twice as long as any previous Sandman story arc and brings back just about every major character from the previous 60 issues. The basic plot is of The Kindly Ones (also known as the Fates, the Furies, Shakespeare's three sisters) plans to destroy Morpheus for violating an age-old rule. In general, the women in the Sandman universe have not been treated particularly well, and in this series of stories they definitely make themselves heard. There is much to think about in terms of choice, free-will and responsibility. It's all a complex tale in terms of who is really pulling the strings and while some of the mystery can be solved, much is left to wonder over.

Marc Hempel drew most of The Kindly Ones and many found his cartoony, expressionistic and jagged artwork jarring. I feel it captured the characters emotions and states of mind brilliantly and added immensely to the story.… (more)