Why this book: I had heard Tim Ferriss strongly endorsing Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book.  I was away from home unexpectedly without my current reading, so visited a book store and found this one.  It looked interesting and not too long.  So I thought I’d give Neil Gaiman a try.

Summary in 3 Sentences.  The protagonist of The Ocean at the End of the Lane  is a middle aged man who returns to the town of his youth, and lapses into memories from his childhood.  The book is written from his perspective as a lonely introverted 7 year old living on a farm in England, when without much warning, reality seems to bend and warp and things start happening that don’t fit the reality that you and I live in.  Reality and fantasy get shuffled and our protagonist comes face-to-face with supernatural versions of good and evil, must decide, react and respond, and grow.

My Impressions: I really didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into as I started this book but soon realized it would fit into the genre of “magical realism.”  The story takes place in about the 1970s or 80s in rural England, and begins with a middle aged man visiting the small town of his youth to attend a funeral – we don’t know whose – and takes a break from the various events to go sit at a spot where he’d had unresolved childhood memories.  Then the book becomes the first person account of a bizarre set of occurrences from the perspective of this man as a seven year old boy.

A stranger comes to stay with his family and is found dead in his car, an apparent suicide  from carbon monoxide – with a hose leading into the car with closed windows.  Near the scene of the suicide, with the police and other adults sorting things out, our young protagonist joins his neighbor, a girl of 13, who is confident and commanding, so he  follows her as she invites him to walk out into some nearby fields.  Then things get strange, and the reader  begins to realize that “we are not in Kansas anymore” as the sky turns a different color, and supernatural beings converse with the girl, and she converses with them,  quite comfortably and confidently.  She tells the boy to NOT let go of her hand, and when he inadvertently does, he feels a sharp pain in his foot, which has significance and opens the door to the rest of the story.

Soon our young protagonist returns home to seeming normality but the strange occurrences in that field continue to enter the boy’s world in the form of a woman who he senses is not what she claims to be, and his intuition is correct, as he see her disrupting his family’s life.  And the 13 year old girl is not what she seems to be either, nor are her mother and grandmother.  But they are clearly “good guys” in this battle between good and evil spirits.  But, it seems in this book, nothing is quite what it seems. The story culminates with an other-worldly confrontation between good and evil spirits on this and some other dimension of reality, where different rules seem to apply.

And then, we return to our middle aged man visiting his town, remembering this strange incident – but there are some things left over from that strange story when he meets again some of the players in that rather bizarre drama from his youth.

An interesting, and unusual book – a cross between a fairy tale and science fiction.  Not a genre I’m at home with.  I would read it again, but with someone else, with whom I could discuss metaphors and symbols, what the author may be trying to get at.   A group of creative people could read this book – it is short, about 180 pages – then get together, drink several glasses of wine, and have a rollicking good time figuring it out.