The Ocean at the End of the Lane
December 3, 2019 5:45 PM - by Neil Gaiman - Subscribe

A man returns to the site of his childhood home where, years before, he knew a girl named Lettie Hempstock who showed him the most marvelous, dangerous, and outrageous things...
posted by kalimac (7 comments total)
 
I finished this a few days ago. I...liked it? I think I mostly found it very scary to read, but very beautiful. I liked visiting the Hempstocks, and I love their timeless, quiet existence. I wonder, though, if this is like Coraline -- if I read it when I was younger, I'd find it a thrilling fantasy and now I'm just deeply unsettled.
posted by kalimac at 5:46 PM on December 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


I read it a few years ago - thought it was a very entertaining adult fairy tale.
posted by COD at 6:19 PM on December 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I remember none of the details but remember it as a very pleasant experience.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:47 PM on December 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


I can't sleep on planes, but I started listening to the audiobook on a redeye home from Vegas. It started cheerily as a tale of a dead lodger can, but then I definitely lost consciousness for a bit, and the book was still going but it was clear that something had gone wrong. Years later I went back and yes it was a very disturbing tale of wrongness. Oof the abusiveness of that creature.
posted by yellowbinder at 7:20 PM on December 3, 2019


I've listened to the audiobook a bunch of times and really enjoyed it. The whole thing seems to hold together in dream logic, like, it seems reasonable at the time but if you really think about it it all falls apart. Which is cool. It's a great book for listening to with your eyes closed, all of the scenery and images become very vivid, you can almost feel it all happening to you, as though you have drifted off and are dreaming the book.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:23 AM on December 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Read it in one sitting. Would recommend! I'd put this up there with Neverwhere or American Gods.
posted by LegallyBread at 10:57 AM on December 5, 2019


I read this years ago. I can't remember the details, but one part of the book struck me as the most viscerally unsettling, frightening thing I'd ever read.
posted by synecdoche at 2:29 PM on December 5, 2019


« Older Leverage: The Homecoming Job...   |  The Flash: The Last Temptation... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster