The Ocean at the End of the Lane

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman's most recent novel, about a man who returns to the house where he grew up to reminisce about his childhood. This takes place by a small pond down by his old childhood friend named Lettie Hempstock, who called this pond an ocean. The novel starts off with a new lodger in his house who stole the narrators fathers car and committed suicide in the car. This act allows a supernatural being to crossover into our world, this woman named Ursula Monkton who forces herself to become part of the Narrators family.

This novel is sort of a metaphor for the way we, as children, use our imaginations to escape the things in our lives we'd rather not experience. It seems Ursula may be the fathers mistress who the Narrator takes a dislike to, and he invents a narrative around her that explains her existence as a supernatural being. The Ocean referred to in the title is also a depiction of how children make believe. This isn't the first time in literature or media this subject has been tackled like this. In Pan's Labyrinth and Gaiman's own Coraline we get the feeling that the "supernatural world" the children enter is a figment of a childs active imagination to deal with something unwanted that has happened in their lives. In Pan's Labyrinth, Ofelia escapes to her fantasy world because she doesn't like that her mother has taken on a new lover, and a fascist one at that. In Coraline, Coraline's parents have moved the family to the country, but they seem to be too busy with work to have time for her.