The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
You might have picked up that I don't read reviews or even dust jackets when selecting books. This was one of those. I had a few hours to spend at a bookstore, so I selected a large stack of interesting looking titles and began on page one. If, by page three I was still interested, I bought it. I spent a lot of money that day. Ocean, written by the same man who gave us Coraline, the creepiest kid movie ever, was definitely a good choice. Had I realized it was the same guy, I might not have picked it up. Teri Hatcher's voice still gives me the heebie-jeebies, and every time I see a LaLaLoopsy doll with button eyes I shiver. So I'm glad I didn't read the flap.
It's hard to describe this short novel without either giving away too much or relegating the fantasy to normal, boring, earthbound language. It reminded me of A Wrinkle In Time, one of my all-time favorite stories but is still very different. Gaiman crafted a fast-paced, character driven novel with immense creativity and enough magic to believe it might all be true. It's gross and engrossing, terribly tragic, and somehow still a children's story on some level. I would not let my seven year old read it just yet, but I will probably introduce him to it after her reads Wrinkle.
There is nothing here for me to critique. When you pull off an entire novel in 178 pages, without leaving a bunch of unresolved threads, you've managed a bit of magic for real. It's neither a short story with fluff padding it, nor a novel with chunks missing. It is, instead, a perfectly satisfactory piece of writing that I am pleased to give four Marias.
No comments:
Post a Comment