The Word for Childhood is Ocean

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One cool place to read the second-to-last chapter of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is bleeding out at a donation place. A blood donation place. And, best place to read the last chapter, at least in Boulder, Colorado? Sitting in the bright bright sun in front of TimeWarp Comics. Also cool about this big little novel is that, in a very cool way, it feels like he’s been going toward it for a while now. I mean—my American Gods is packed away for the summer, so I can’t cite this or even use the right names (anybody?), but remember that chapter where Shadow stays the night with those two or three sisters, and one of them’s the moon? More than anything, The Ocean at the End of the Lane reminded me of that. But it also brought me back to that issue of Sandman, about how all the cats are trying to dream themselves back to being in charge of things. Or . . . isn’t there also a Sandman issue where people keep letting lost in the dreamspace of a desert, and a kitten saves one of them? That kitten is in Ocean, here. And wonderfully so. And, while this novel is for adults, still, it’s somehow also a sister book to Coraline. Not just because it’s Gaiman, either. It’s more like the same well’s getting tapped. Of mystery, of — of myth? It’s that fairy tale kind of tone that Gaiman does maybe better than anybody, right now.  . . . → → →