Source of book: Borrowed from (and recommended by) my kid.
Our family’s journey with Neil Gaiman started back in 2015. You can read the various posts about Gaiman books at the end of this one. Having discovered Terry Pratchett a couple years before, and incorporated Discworld into our vacation travels, we decided to listen to Good Omens on an epic trip to Colorado and back. That book, of course, was co-written by Neil Gaiman, so we decided to give his other books a try, starting with Coraline later that year. The singing mice captured the heart of my second kid (who was into everything mouse in her childhood, which is how we discovered Richard Peck and Kate DiCamillo as well), and she started devouring all the Gaiman she could find. He quickly became one of her favorite authors, and we ended up listening to all of his kid-appropriate books on our travels. Okay, and some not-entirely-appropriate books, like Neverwhere. My wife and I do not believe in censoring books for kids (see: our Fundamentalist upbringing), and told our kids they could read what they wanted, but should feel free to stop if they found a book boring or too scary. They did fine with Neverwhere, though, and before too long, their reading had far outpaced my own.
Since it had been a few years, I decided I would read one of his adult novels. I originally intended to read American Gods, but my two eldest wanted me to read The Ocean at the End of the Lane instead, as it is one of their favorites.
This book is a short novel, and, like so many Gaiman books, seamlessly blends the contemporary world with the supernatural. The narrator returns to his childhood home, finds it demolished, but then goes to the end of the lane to see the family of his childhood friend, Lettie Hempstock, whom he has vague memories of.
As he sits by the pond remembering, his memories come back with a rush, and he recalls a crazy series of events that overtook him and his family. In the book, the start of the horrifying adventure is triggered by an event that Gaiman took from his own life: a person stole the family car, then committed suicide in it.
This suicide rends the fabric between the human world and the supernatural, and a “flea” enters the human world. This term is used by the matriarch of the Hempstock clan to describe these supernatural beings from another world/dimension that tend to infest the human world given a chance. First manifesting as a cloth monster, the being manages to insert a portal to her dimension in the narrator (a seven year old boy at the time), and incarnate herself as Ursula Monkton, the family’s new governess. Ursula ingratiates herself in the family, while turning them on the narrator (who, as the holder of the doorway back, is a mere tool to her.)
The narrator (who never gets a name), manages to escape the house and is rescued by Lettie, who uses the ocean (the pond) to bring him to her house, where she and her mother and grandmother can attempt to destroy Ursula and if possible, remove the gateway before the Hunger Birds (vultures of the supernatural world) tear it out of the narrator. So yes, pretty scary and intense stuff, and a somewhat ambiguous ending.
There are some fascinating elements in the story. First, the idea that these “fleas” seek to somehow manipulate human nature to their own advantage. In the case of Ursula, she tries to “give humans what they want,” primarily money. As any thoughtful human could tell you, it isn’t that simple. Money, particularly unearned and in excess, rarely makes things better, and often makes people worse. The triggering event plays into this too. The suicide is triggered by financial loss, so the flea thinks mere lucre could have prevented it. Leave it to Gaiman to turn a traumatic childhood memory into a tale of terror.
Another element is Gaiman’s use of the “threefold goddess,” the virgin, the mother, and the crone. (This is used to a more humorous effect by Terry Pratchett in books like Wyrd Sisters.) Lettie is the virgin - an 11 year old girl who is probably neither of those things. Lettie’s mother is the mother, and grandma is the crone. And all three are arguably manifestations of the same entity.
The book also hits many of the same themes and emotional points as the equally scary Coraline. The idea that one’s parents could turn on you, or be replaced by sinister clones, is about as terrifying as it gets. How Gaiman, who is by all accounts (and strong evidence) one of the nicest guys around, can so effectively tap into the dark side and our worst fears, is an interesting question.
Speaking of that, this book shows an incredible awareness of the fragility and fears of childhood. I remembered things I had forgotten while reading it, honestly. One of the blurbs at the front of the book, by Laura Miller of Salon, sums it up well.
“The impotence of childhood is often the first thing sentimental adults forget about it; Gaiman is able to resurrect, with brutal immediacy, the abject misery of being unable to control one’s own life.”
This is something I feel I need to talk about a bit. If you go down into the most secret parts of my psyche, you can find this sort of an existential terror centering around this lack of control. While my childhood was mostly good, and my parents mostly loving in those days before Gothard and his cult, I remember the feeling of impotence so clearly. Obviously, small children experience this as part of mere existence - as dependents without the physical and mental developments to manage our own lives, we spend years in need of others to support us and make decisions that will shape our lives as adults. As we grow up, we gain the ability to take on more responsibility for our own lives. At least, that is the way it should be.
Unfortunately, Gothard and other Authoritarian Fundamentalists teach a different principle: that hierarchy still applies, not just to teenages, but to adult children. It was thus, that as I grew, my empowerment shrunk as my parents went deeper and deeper into Gothard’s cult, and a number of decisions (namely higher education and career) were taken from me. I can recall simmering in frustration that there seemed to be no way to wrest some degree of control over my own life away from the powers that were.
In this, I really felt the emotional impact of Gaiman’s story. The people the narrator should have most been able to trust were not free to protect him. Rather, they were controlled by the malevolent supernatural power that came into the world. And in the same way, I could not trust my parents to make decisions over my life in my best interest, because they were co-opted by Gothard and the theo-political ideology of the Dominionist movement. Unfortunately, unlike the narrator, I never had the miracle happen, and my parents restored to who they were before Gothard. As a result, relationships have been gradually stripped away, first between them and my wife, and now my own relationship with them. Ideology won in the end, and I lost. I do not see a scenario in which I can have back the good people who raised me, free from the poison of the ideologies.
Particularly harrowing in the book was the scene in which the formerly loving (if strict) father inflicts a brutal punishment on the narrator at the behest of Ursula. I feel this was the case with my parents too. They were taught of a need to exert control through physical and psychological punishment – violence, really – for the greater good of breaking our wills. (So we would be unquestioningly obedient of course – that’s how Authoritarian Fundamentalism works.) Their better instincts softened things a lot, which is why I have good childhood memories. But the underlying issue was always problematic, and looking back, I can see that it made it nigh-on-impossible to switch to a relationship of equals once I grew up. And thus, why there was a need to attempt to reassert control at various times well into my 40s.
I want to return to that opening idea of childhood, though. The narrator recalls the experience of returning to a childhood place, and finding it a lot smaller than he remembered. I have had this happen so many times and about so many things. What is interesting too is that the opposite is often true of memories of emotions. We adults tend to remember childhood emotions as somehow smaller than they were. Whereas what we really need to remember - particularly when dealing with our own kids - is how big childhood experiences are, especially the emotions. In doing so, we can also better understand our own. There is an exchange in the book between Lettie and the narrator that is fascinating.
“Grown-ups and monsters aren’t scared of things.”
“Oh, monsters are scared,” said Lettie. “That’s why they’re monsters. And as for grown-ups…” She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, “I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
None of us really know what we are doing, do we? Which is why I believe it is so easy for us to fall prey to charlatans with a formula to sell. We want so badly to outsource these tough decisions to some authority. A religious leader, a politician, an expert of some sort. The problem is, real experts can’t give certainty - they understand the provisional nature of knowledge and the limitations of what we do not know. Certainty on the other hand, is easy for liars and grifters and con men. And thus, they sell their poison so effectively to so many.
This was the terror of this book. When the narrator understands that he cannot trust his own family, that he is truly on his own, he almost cannot take it. It is only his lifeline at the end of the lane, as scary as the witches/goddesses are in their own way, that can give him the courage to follow the truth he knows that he cannot tell to those closest to him.
There is one more thing I thought I would mention about Gaiman’s writing. Along with his replacement of parents with facsimiles of them, controlled by a supernatural being that wants to have humanity for itself, he explores the question of what makes something alive and human. In Coraline, the eyes are one way, and other cues that remind me of the “uncanny valley.” In Ocean at the End of the Lane, the line is finer, because the narrator’s parents are his parents, just influenced by Ursula. But there is a difference, and he can see it. This ties in with a fascinating observation early in the book. The narrator sees the dead body of the suicide, and remembers Madame Tussard’s, and the horrors of the waxworks. But while they scared him, he never did feel the dead people depicted were really dead.
The only thing that had kept me from running screaming from the Chamber of Horrors as I was led around it was that none of the waxworks had looked fully convincing. They could not truly look dead, because they did not ever look alive.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane was an interesting read. Like most of Gaiman’s more adult works (at least from what I can tell), there is no fully happy ending. Once bad things happen, there is no restoring things completely. Choices have to be made, compromises accepted. Loss is inevitable, so it is more a question of mitigation, not restoration. This, despite all of the fantastical elements of his stories, is the truth that Gaiman tells so well in his books. Life is like that. What doesn’t kill us still leaves us injured, and full restoration is a fantasy. But there is still a reason to live, to keep on, to make the best of the hand we are dealt. Gaimen never seems despairing; merely unflinching and unafraid of the truth. And just perhaps, the reason Gaiman is able to think so compassionately and ethically is that he understands the flip side, the darkness that is so easy to embrace when we give in to fear and the need for control.
I look forward to talking with my older kids about this one.
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Previous Neil Gaiman posts:
Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett)
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