4/24/20: I for the first time heard Neil Gaiman Himself read this to me via audiobook, his wonderfully mellifluous, seductive voice carrying me along. I once heard him read an excerpt from it when he was on his book tour. A former student had bought me a ticket to come and get a signed copy and hear him read and talk, and that is a wonderful memory, but this was also a fine experience. Of course I can't help but think of certain books as pertinent to the things I (and the world) are going throug

4/24/20: I for the first time heard Neil Gaiman Himself read this to me via audiobook, his wonderfully mellifluous, seductive voice carrying me along. I once heard him read an excerpt from it when he was on his book tour. A former student had bought me a ticket to come and get a signed copy and hear him read and talk, and that is a wonderful memory, but this was also a fine experience. Of course I can't help but think of certain books as pertinent to the things I (and the world) are going through, and this is no less true for this book, that teaches us how to meet--as best we can--daily, ever-present horror, with courage and hope, through story and imagination.If you haven't read it yet, there are spoilers in here, but if you are a Gaiman fan, none of it would surprise you.Neil Gaiman says this is a book for adults (rather than all ages) because it focuses more on helplessness than hope, but I disagree with him, though if what he means is that this might be a little too scary for kids, I might at this point agree. It is told from the perspective of an adult coming home for a funeral, visiting his old neighborhood, remembering a terrifying time in his child hood, that might just make it more an adult book than a children’s story. But it also does have hope in it, lots of it.I am a Gaiman fan. I teach a graphic novels class and sometimes introduce students to his Sandman series, epic in the field. I like reading his children’s books like Coraline and The Graveyard Book. Ocean is a relatively short book, sort of a stretched out short story, as he claims himself; he was asked to write a story and it just grew, and now is a novella. He says he wrote this for his wife, Amanda Palmer, who doesn't like or understand the kind of writing he does (horror, fantasy), to help explain what he does, to help her see where the stories came from, and where they continue to come from, and where he has always lived. So in this sense it is a teaching book, though much of what I read from Gaiman seems to be teaching us things, not in a didactic way, as in telling, but in an evocative, lovely way, as in showing you what he means, which is just a basic principle of great storytelling.Gaiman is in this book teaching us, as with other books, about the power of myth, story, language itself, and place, the natural world, community, family friendship--all these good things, in the face of childhood fears, and other, adult fears, since we are all potentially still children inside, at our best, and we have our own fears to face, too. But this book focuses on what it might mean to grow up, centered on a seven year old boy living with his little sister and parents in what would seem to be the area where Gaiman grew up in England; he takes his wife and us there to show us the power and mystery of this part of rural England, where a boy mainly reads to create a foundation of imagination and courage in the face of childhood isolation and scary things. Reading and nursery rhymes and poetry are shot through this book; they are what saves the boy, revives him, protects him, heals him.There are also in this book three women with psychic powers, Old Mrs Hempstock, Ginny--the Mom, and Lettie--the 11 year old girl, who are among the most delightful (and hopeful) characters you will ever meet in a book, three generations of psychic strength against the powers of darkness, three women emanating out of Goodness against a panoply of truly creepy, and sometimes disturbing and sometimes really kind of terrifying emanations of Darkness, living in a house at the end of the lane, a house we are told is registered in the ancient Domesday book, a house with a pond that Lettie calls an ocean, which IS an ocean, finally, and you'll see why her naming it that is crucial for children and the imagination. Names and naming figure in this story powerfully.So we are led to see that the struggle between darkness and light we read in this book has been at it for centuries, for eternity. And the Hempstocks are So Good as they run warm baths, making delicious warm food Gaiman seems to call up out of memory, recipes of warmth and community. Nostalgia runs through this book, as Gaiman gets homesick a bit for these aspects of his past, and helps us miss and recreate for others such goodness for others. The past is where these stories emanate from, that Gaiman reveres: Narnia, Lewis Carroll, Gilbert & Sullivan. The things that sustained him.The boy's new black kitten, Fluffy, dies, run over by a boarder, an ex-opal miner, who borrows the boy's Dad's car, drives to the end of the lane and kills himself, unleashing the powers of Darkness all over the place, in part in the form of scary nanny Ursula Monkton who is almost as delightfully frightening as the Hempstocks are delightfully strong and funny and good. We face these dark powers through the boy, and what he learns to do to face them, we learn: We read, we sing and tell ourselves stories, we hold hands with and learn from our friends, we stand strong in the face of fear, we use the potential in our vivid imaginations to overcome what we have imagined, conjured up, that we imagine will leave us hopeless, and yes, sometimes we are overcome by these powers, it happens. Just at the point we might really be scared in this story, we see how the boy quietly copes with the horror. We learn from this boy how young, read-all-day kids, learn to cope with the world as it is. We find ways to hope out of the toolbox of our imaginations, and by binding ourselves to powerful spirits of friendship and community and story and song and beauty.Childhood for Gaiman is not a place of innocence and simplicity, it is a place of scary, spooky, often frightening and alienating stuff, and we have to figure out how to get out of this maze to adulthood. Gaiman seems to tell us how he did it and others like him--we readers, perhaps?--do or can do it. This book is a myth or allegory Gaiman tells like other myths, and myths always teach us things. And this is essentially a simple myth; a very bad and disturbing set of things happen, a downhill snowball of bad things happening, and with help the boy figures out what to do to overcome this bad scene. And he does, that's what happens in most myths, magic happens, though the ending of this one has lots of questions, or makes you think about various meanings, and this is good, it's not simple, you will have to reread it, as you are supposed to do with myths. I need to reread this for what it seems to say about memory, but I like what he says about the way experience gets integrated into our identities and is even often literally forgotten for a time.Gaiman can be a really, really great writer. This is a simple story with not a lot happening, one central set of battles, but the language you encounter along the way teaches we writers the power of metaphor and analogy and subtlety. I wasn’t when I first read this really a horror fan, and neither was Gaiman's wife, apparently, so he seems to teach us one reason to read and write and view horror, not to become devastated, not to just become terrified, to get to despair, but to figure out how to conquer the fear, the terrors, the devastation. I liked it very much and recommend you check it out if you haven't read it (or heard it) yet. Some reviewers felt it was "slight" but I disagree; I think it is focused and deft and lean and filled with sweet and scary touches. And it's not about helplessness, Neil, it's about hope, like so many of your scary books also seem to be.Just reread it for my class, again, and it is even better the fourth time!!!Lovely, lovely book. Read it!Gaiman on Reading:Gaiman on Reading Horror: