Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

I picked up this book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, with great eagerness.  I loved Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.  For some reason, the fantastical world really gelled for me in that book.  I embraced the main character and his trials and bought into every aspect of the supernatural element in that book.  This book, however, didn't snag me wholeheartedly like The Graveyard Book did.

The story follows a middle-aged man who returns to his childhood home for a funeral.  He finds himself wandering down the lane to an old farmhouse where he once met the magical girl, Lettie Hempstock.  As he stands by the pond, what she calls an "ocean," he begins to bring back long-buried memories of a time when he was seven and one of their borders committed suicide in his father's car.  This event triggers a crack into the supernatural world and evil enters with a vengeance.

I loved the idea of exploring how our childhood memories influence our adult lives.  I love thinking about how memories can be different from person to person.  We definitely embellish our memories more than we probably realize.  The touchstone for the novel was a worthwhile germ.  But, it didn't pan out to anything worthwhile for me.

Perhaps I am only drawn to Gaiman's children's literature.  Perhaps I was hoping the story would hold greater meaning.  I don't know.  I just know I didn't like it as much as I anticipated.  It was well-written.  The writing carried one into the story but didn't deliver an absorbing adventure or develop the characters quite as well as I would have liked.  I didn't feel drawn to the characters or the story.  The fantastical elements seemed too fantastical.  At one point, the boy pulls a long worm from a hole in his foot and later the hole in his foot holds the portal to the evil world his new nanny has sprung from.  What?

I appreciate a good story of good versus evil, but this didn't appeal to me for some reason.  I'm not even sure why.  I did glean one interesting thing from the book.  It made reference to a science experiment my boys would love.  Something about blackening an egg with a candle flame and then putting it in a clear container filled with salt water.  Supposedly the egg will hang in the middle of the water and will appear to be silver.  Now that's something my boys would enjoy seeing.

I am still a fan of Neil Gaiman's writing.  He has a particular voice and style.  Besides his writing voice, I love his actual voice as he reads passages of his writing.  It is rich and full of suspense and mystery.  I loved hearing him read his wonderful little children's book, The Blueberry Girl.  I often found myself hearing his voice reading the rich sentences of this book.

I will probably re-read The Graveyard Book again some day.  Plus, I fully intend to check out another one of his adult novels to see if it is merely a matter of only liking his children's literature.  If you've read more of Gaiman's work for adults, which one would you suggest?