The Ocean at the End of the Lane Analysis

We just had to squeeze the word bucolic in there. It's the best, right? It sounds like a cross between a vegetable and an unpleasant digestive disorder, but refers to how beautiful and calm the cou...

Our story is told by the adult version of the boy who experiences all of the book's strange occurrences at the age of seven. So we are able to experience the story as it happens, with the occasiona...

Magical RealismAlthough the magical realism genre mostly has its roots in Latin American literature (check out Gabriel Garcia Marquez) this story fits the category perfectly. It is characterized by...

It's important, we think, to distinguish the fact that there are more like two voices narrating our story: the adult narrator taking a trip down memory lane, and then the view of the boy as the eve...

Gaiman isn't Tolkien, so he's not writing descriptions of trees that take up three whole pages, and he doesn't waste time describing anything that isn't absolutely essential to the story either. Ho...

The title choice is just beautiful for this book, especially if you look at it on two different levels. Superficially, it's a great name because the "ocean" at the end of the lane refers to Lettie'...

"I remember my own childhood vividly… I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them." Maurice Sendak, in conversation with Art Spiegelman, The New Yorke...

I wondered where the illusion of the second moon had come from, but I only wondered for a moment, and then I dismissed it from my thoughts. Perhaps it was an afterimage, I decided, or a ghost: some...

While the language of the novel itself isn't particularly difficult (if you're a Harry Potter fan you should be able to parse the British phrases like a pro), some of the ideas and concepts can be...