Wednesday Write-In #91

outfox  ::  couture  ::  spell  ::  grate  ::  willow

Image: spartacus.wikia.com

Prey

I stop at the willow tree. Heart galloping. Fast – so fast! Breathe. Look. I can hear them – smell them. Not far. Hallooooing trumpets, their dogs in a frenzy.
I have nowhere to go.
They are coming.
I blink. Breath tears through me. Thirsty so thirsty so tired… Instinct takes over. The world looks strange as I run. Behind, not far enough, the howling starts again. They have my scent, and they are coming.

I had been cleaning out the grate when it happened. I froze as I heard the Ladies coming back into the Great Room; I’d been sure they’d left for the day, but I must have been mistaken.
Or, they’d changed their minds. It wasn’t unknown.
Their voices tinkled in the hallway, and I doubled my pace, fingers trembling, praying…
‘Ah! Look, sister. Our little soot-boy is still here.’
‘It cannot be!’
‘I assure you.’
‘But, whatever for?‘
‘I presume he has been lazy, and has left his tasks undone until the last moment. Wouldn’t you think so, sister dear?’
‘No other explanation presents itself, certainly.’
I stumbled to my feet, turning and bowing low. I hid my filthy hands from their cool, clean gazes; I shrank my plain, worn garments from their gowns, elaborate, couture, worth more than my life.
I knew.
‘My ladies, I -‘
‘Do not speak, boy,’ spat Lady Mary. ‘Have you been given permission to speak?’
‘Milady, no -‘
‘Again! He spoke again!’ crowed Lady Elizabeth. ‘Did you hear him, sister?’
Lady Mary did not answer. She crossed the room, her steps quick, her shoes click-click beneath the rustling of her skirts. She stood three feet from me, and I could hear her breathing. I crunched my eyes shut.
‘You. I tire of you, boy. Your insolence upsets me.’
I said nothing. My eyes burned.
‘A punishment, sister!’ called Lady Elizabeth, from the door.
‘I have just the thing,’ replied Lady Mary. The hissing of silks and two careful steps, and a giggle.
And then the pain.

I wake in her arms. Lady Mary’s. Her fingers cold. Cruel. Like metal. My breaths too quick. No voice. No hands. I kick. Her fingers dig in, deeper, like a claw. Like a trap.
‘Peace, soot-boy,’ she hisses. ‘The spell is yet to settle fully. If you disturb it now, it will be worse for you.’
I do not believe her. I try to cry out again, but nothing comes.
Striding toward the door. A hand reaches to unlatch it. Sunlight, air, a bright day.
Distant yapping makes my spine contract. I struggle. I try to bite.
‘You beast!’ screams Lady Mary.
She flings me from her and I fall. I miss my footing. No – I cannot find my feet, because they are not there. Before I can move, a savage pain bursts through me and I spin, splayed, out onto the lawn.
She has kicked me.
And then I see it. I am covered in fur.
The keening of dogs makes me heartsick. I know without knowing that they are coming for me.
‘Let’s see you outfox us now, little hare,’ I hear. Lady Mary. Lady Elizabeth stands beside her in the doorway, laughing. Her eyes dance.
‘Run, soot-boy!’ she calls, waving.
Once again, as I have always done, I obey.

The dogs are upon me. I can smell them. I can taste their hunger. No matter where I run, they are there.
Trumpets. Shouting. Howling. Heartache. Agony.
I taste my own blood on my tongue.
A flash of light draws my eye. Through a haze, I see. Sunlight. Sparkling on water.
The river!
A snarl to my right makes me veer left; a howl to my left makes me redouble my pace. I cannot breathe. These limbs, not my own, are numb.
Screaming from behind me. I cannot hear the words. I do not need to hear to understand.
I stretch, further than I think I can bear. Feel like I am being torn in two.
The dogs’ breath burns like an open flame.
Then the water, so shocking, so cold, so fast, so clear, and the pain, the pain, the thumping, deafening, whirlpooling agony, the popping and bursting, the groaning of muscles and sinew, the stretching and rending of bone…
I drag myself up on the far shore. My fingers run red. I am shivering, naked. I turn, blinking through my own eyes, through a film of exhaustion, at the hunters.
The water washed the spell away, along with my scent, but the dogs play at the shoreline, dancing with the water, waiting for the word. They don’t need to smell me to tear me to shreds.
A hunter raises her bow, and cocks it.
‘Wait!’ calls another, a slender girl, her skin flushed. ‘Not yet.’
‘But they will ask for his heart,’ replies the other. The bow does not tremble.
‘We can find another hare,’ says the slender girl, turning to me. Her dark eyes fill with fire. ‘Leave him for another day.’
‘But -‘
‘Just do as I ask,’ says the slender girl. She smiles, but it is not gentle. ‘He has given us the best chase in years. Would you destroy him?’
The bow is lowered.
‘And, as we well know,’ says the slender girl, ‘men make much easier prey than hares.’
She blows me a mocking kiss and pulls her horse around. The others follow, reluctantly, and soon I hear the howling start again.
They will know the heart is not mine.
I do not have long.

 

Saturday Book Review – ‘Half Bad’

Sally Green’s début novel, ‘Half Bad’, has been getting a lot of press lately. It’s been called an ‘edgy and gripping success’ by the Telegraph, but the Guardian declared that ‘any sense of menace had been magicked out’ of it; over on Goodreads opinions appear similarly divided, with some readers feeling it owes a little too much to Harry Potter and others quite certain that its magical rites and traditions are utterly unique.

As for me? In typical fashion, I can see the merits of both points of view.

Image: theguardian.com

Nathan Byrn lives with his grandmother and siblings (or, more technically, half-siblings) in an unnamed town in a country we can reasonably assume to be modern-day England. His eldest sister, Jessica, hates him with utter conviction, but his other siblings – Deborah and Arran – are depicted as kind and caring. Their mother, we soon learn, took her own life at some point in the past. Jessica, Deborah and Arran’s father is also dead – killed before the book begins by Marcus, the greatest and most powerful Black Witch in existence. Marcus also happens to be Nathan’s father.

After a very brief introduction to the child Nathan, the book opens in stunning form, introducing us to an older Nathan who is – for reasons unexplained – locked in a cage and living as a semi-slave under the total control of a tall, strong woman who is utterly immovable, both physically and emotionally. It takes us through his daily routine, his attempts to keep his sanity, his desire to escape. Those parts of the story which deal with Nathan’s imprisonment are narrated in the second person, an extraordinary technique which simultaneously makes the reader feel what Nathan’s feeling while also expressing his desire to distance himself from what is happening to him:

“You’re dizzy so it’s easy to swoon, sinking to your knees. She grabs you by your armpits but your left hand isn’t injured and it finds the handle and slides the knife out of her boot while she grapples with your dead weight and as you let your body sink further you bring the blade to your jugular. Fast and hard.

But she’s so bloody quick, and you kick and fight and fight and kick but she gets the knife off you and you’ve no kick and no fight left at all…”

(‘Half Bad’, page 17)

The text backtracks to show us why, and how, Nathan ended up in this situation, beginning as he starts secondary school at age eleven and comes into contact with the O’Brien children, who are powerful White Witches. The book takes place in a world where witches and ‘fains’, ordinary folk, intermingle – most fains aren’t aware, or don’t care, that witches exist and most witches are utterly indifferent to them, too. However, within the world of witches a huge gulf exists between the White and the Black. Hatred isn’t too strong a word to describe what they feel for one another. Nathan, as a half-Black, half-White witch, apparently the only one of his kind, is a focus for the Whites’ anger and disgust for Black magic, and receives severe treatment at the hands of the O’Brien boys.

It is the O’Brien’s sister Annalise who shows Nathan kindness and acceptance, and Annalise who becomes his only friend. That is, of course, until her family forces them apart.

Fearful that Nathan will develop into a Black witch – and perhaps one as powerful as his fabled father – he is kept under strict control. His life and freedom is curtailed by decree after decree, he must present himself for regular testing by the Council of White Witches, and – eventually – he is imprisoned by them. Not the most effective way of encouraging Nathan’s White side, inherited from his mother, to emerge, perhaps, but it’s such a human, bureaucratic, blind course of action that it feels utterly real. Throughout the book, the idea of White magic as ‘good’, no matter what it thinks of itself, and Black magic as ‘bad’ is constantly questioned; certainly, the White witches in this book are cruel, inhumane and severe, almost to an individual.

But of course we can’t forget the Black witches and their tendency to commit murder, most particularly Marcus, Nathan’s father, who not only kills his victims, but also eats their hearts…

Nathan embarks upon a quest to discover the truth about who he is – White or Black, a murderer or not – and, of course, the clock is ticking. He must figure all this out by his seventeenth birthday, the traditional day of a witch’s Giving ceremony, where they imbibe (along with the blood of their ancestors) the magic which will define them for the rest of their life.

I enjoyed this book. It was compelling, and well-written, and the central characters (particularly Nathan, whom I really warmed to) were fully drawn and fleshed out. I could see the similarities to the world of Harry Potter – the Hunters were a little like Aurors, the looming figure of Marcus was somewhat Voldemort-like, Nathan was scarred, like a certain Boy Who Lived – but I really feel Sally Green has done something different with her magical world. Of course, J.K. Rowling drew on folklore and witch-lore for her books, too, and Green draws on the same store of knowledge, but that doesn’t mean they are telling the same story. ‘Half Bad’ is gritty and violent and ‘real’, for a book about witches; it is about pain and suffering and struggle more than it is about magic. It’s about finding out who you are when you’re not sure you’re going to like who you are.

I wasn’t entirely sold on the ending – and, if I’m being honest, the last quarter of the book lost its hold over me, just a little – but nonetheless I’ll be impatiently waiting for ‘Half Wild’, its sequel, due for publication this time next year. I’m intrigued by Nathan Byrn, and I want to see how he ends up – and that’s recommendation enough for any book.

Image: s.667.photobucket.com, created by devillygirl88

 

 

 

Book Review Saturday – The Islands of Chaldea

I know, I know – I reviewed a Diana Wynne Jones book a couple of weeks ago. But, to be entirely fair, there’s no such thing as too much Diana Wynne Jones. And this, her last book, was always going to be one for me.

Image: readeroffictions.com

By now, perhaps you know the story behind this book – DWJ became very ill during the writing of it, and died with it partly finished, whereupon her sister Ursula was asked to complete it – but, even if things hadn’t worked out like this, and Diana had had a chance to finish it the way she wanted to, I would have been excited to read it. Sometimes, I feel that DWJ can be a little hit-and-miss for me: I love some of her books with the entirety of my heart, and others leave me a bit cold and confused (I don’t really ‘get’ the Chrestomanci books, for instance, which other readers adore); however, she’s always worth the read, and that’s the beauty of her work.

‘The Islands of Chaldea’ tells the story of Aileen, a young trainee Wise Woman from the island of Skarr. Her aunt Beck is the island’s last remaining Wise Woman, and the book opens with Aileen’s initiation, which she is convinced she failed. She doesn’t have the usual reaction to the ceremony, she has no visions, and she tells herself her magic is weak or non-existent. After her aunt Beck, the magic in her family will be gone – or so Aileen thinks.

Summoned to an unexpected audience with King Kenig, the ruler of Skarr, Beck and Aileen are dumbfounded when they are told they are to mount an expedition to discover the reason behind a giant invisible barrier in the sea between the islands of Skarr, Gallis and Bernica (the Islands of Chaldea), and the larger island of Logra, which has been impossible to reach for over ten years. Nobody understands why, or how, this has happened, and it is up to Beck and Aileen, and their band of unlikely helpers, to figure it out. Not only that, but the prince of Chaldea – Alasdair, the son of the High King Farlane – was taken through a sort of magical wormhole to Logra about a year after the barrier went up, and he hasn’t been seen since. It is believed that the magicians of Logra have devised this unbeatable barrier in order to set about creating weapons, unobserved by anyone from the rest of the archipelago, and fears of an imminent attack are high.

Ivar, the son of King Kenig and Queen Mevenne, is sent along with Beck and Aileen. With them goes Ogo, a young man of Logra who was stranded on Skarr when the barrier went up.

Image: brandondorman.com
Artist: Brandon Dorman

On the way, they stop off at a partially sunk island named Lone, where they come across a strange cat which can appear and disappear at will, and which seems strangely attached to Aileen. He is immediately christened ‘Plug-Ugly’. In the land of Bernica, they meet a monk called Finn who has a parrot named Green Greet, who is far more than he seems. And, in Gallis – the land of Aileen’s father – they meet some of her cousins, one of whom has a pet lizard, who then comes along for the ride.

It seemed clear to me that the islands were supposed to be the British Isles – Skarr being Scotland, Logra England, Bernica Ireland and Gallis Wales – and that gave me a lot of joy as I read (though I could have done without the obligatory ‘leprechaun’ reference as they journey through Bernica.) The animals they collect upon the way are important to the story, of course, but they also have a symbolic resonance. I found the plot to be simple and gentle, with a distinct lack of peril – I’m not saying this is a bad thing, by the way – mainly because it was narrated in a way which made it very clear that Aileen is recalling past events. This removes part of the sense of danger and tension, but also makes the narration ebb and flow, just like the reader is on board the ship beside the characters, bobbing up and down on the ocean waves.

Parts of the book are very funny – particularly the scene where aunt Beck is attempting to air out her clothing to rid it of bad magic, which involves pegging her underwear all over the ship – and, in parts, the dialogue is well-written and well-conceived. At other points, however, Aileen’s dialogue in particular sounds a little clunky and the overall tone is a little toothless. As well as that, at times it appeared that some of the plot points hung on coincidence, or some of the challenges facing the characters were very simply overcome, which took away from my total enjoyment of the book. I admit to finding the ending very ‘smooth’ and neat – so, in other words, very different from DWJ’s normal style which is, sadly, only to be expected – and, for all these reasons, ‘The Islands of Chaldea’ isn’t up there with ‘A Tale of Time City’ or ‘Hexwood’ or ‘Enchanted Glass’ as my favourites of her middle grade books. Because of the fact that it was her last, however, and it was the book that was on her mind as she faced her end, and it was lovingly finished by her sister who (if her Afterword is any indication) had very little to go on when she picked up the reins, I will always cherish it.

So, it’s a definite recommendation from me, if you’re a Diana Wynne Jones fan. If you haven’t read her before, though, I’d recommend ‘Enchanted Glass’ or perhaps even her famous ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ as an introductory book.

And – as ever – if you’ve read any of the books I’ve mentioned in this post, I’d love to hear what you thought!

Book Review Saturday – ‘The Magic Thief’

I actually read ‘The Magic Thief’ a little while ago, but I’m currently enjoying its sequel so the story-world is on my mind and fresh in my memory. Here, have a look. Isn’t it pretty?

Image: bellaonbooks.wordpress.com

One of the many things I loved about this book (because I’m a tactile creature) is the way it feels. It’s a wonderful shape, slightly more square than an ‘average’ paperback – not that you can tell from the image above – and wonderfully thick. It’s also stuffed full of illustrations, coded messages, letters and diary entries, which sit alongside the text and are as much as part of the story as the words themselves. It’s a beautiful object.

The story introduces us to Connwaer (referred to as Conn), a pick-pocket who lives by his wits in the streets of the city of Wellmet. The city is divided in half – one side is referred to as the Twilight, where Conn lives, and is slightly more down-at-heel than the other side, the Sunrise – and a wide river runs through it, upon which are several small islets. A map is helpfully included at the beginning, which I always love. As far as I understood, the city being referred to as ‘the Twilight’ and ‘the Sunrise’ didn’t have anything to do with their relative levels of darkness and light – they were just names. I did find that a bit confusing, as in I expected the Twilight to be constantly dark and the Sunrise to be constantly bright, but that’s probably just me being silly and over-literal.

In any case, one evening Conn decides to pick the pocket of a deceptively frail-looking old man, and gets far more than he’d bargained for. This old man is Nevery Flinglas, a hugely powerful wizard who has returned (unofficially) from exile in order to figure out why Wellmet’s reserves of magic have been dwindling, and how to fix it. Wellmet runs on magic, and everything – from its power to its economy – relies upon it. So, when Conn picks Nevery’s pocket, he ends up stealing his locus magicalicus, or the stone he uses to focus his magic (also called a ‘locus stone’.) It is akin to a wizard’s soul, perhaps – the core of his power, the most sacred part of his being, and his most treasured possession. More importantly, touching Nevery’s locus magicalicus should have killed Conn.

But it doesn’t.

Intrigued, Nevery takes the boy in, and decides to train him as an apprentice in an attempt to get to the bottom of his mysterious survival. They return to Nevery’s house, Heartsease, which remains in a state of disrepair since his forced departure twenty years before; it has a huge hole blown right through its centre after a botched magical experiment, and has never been repaired. Conn – for the first time in his life warm, and fed, and a focus of interest – decides to stay with Nevery and his manservant Benet, and gradually it becomes clear that he is far more than a ‘mere’ thief. Despite being illiterate and unschooled, he manages to understand, on a very deep level, the spells that Nevery teaches him, and he only needs to hear the words of a spell once before they are imprinted upon his memory. Clearly, Conn is more than he appears to be.

Nevery enrolls him in the Academicos, a school for wizards (and no – it’s nothing like Harry Potter. I was surprised to see so many reviews on Goodreads slam this book for being a ‘Harry Potter ripoff’, simply because it features magic and magical students. Not every book which features magic is a ripoff of Potter. Magic, magical schools and students of magic existed in literature before Potter, and – with any luck – will continue to exist in our post-Potter world. The Academicos is its own thing, and it is not a second-rate version of Hogwarts. Rant over.) Conn isn’t accepted there, to say the least, not only because of his origins but because he doesn’t have his own locus magicalicus. You’re not a real wizard without your own locus stone, it seems, and so he sets off on a quest to find it.

This, of course, won’t be easy.

And, as well as that, there’s the question of Wellmet’s disappearing magic to worry about. Where is it going? What’s happening to it? And – vitally – what will happen to Wellmet when all the magic vanishes?

An illustration typical of the book, showing Nevery’s diary, Conn, Nevery and Benet on a backdrop of the map of Wellmet
Image: sarah-prineas.com
Artist: Antonio Javier Caparo

Conn is sure that the received wisdom regarding magic is wrong, and he develops his own ideas about how magic works, and a possible explanation as to what’s happening to it. Of course, because he’s not a hairy-bearded wizard with seventy years’ experience, nobody listens to what he has to say. Despite his obvious talent, Nevery keeps telling him to knuckle down with his apprenticeship and leave the thinking to him, and with his fellow students (and their masters) trying to nobble him at every turn, Conn does the only thing he can: try to solve the mystery on his own.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved Conn, and I enjoyed his relationship with Nevery. I really liked the character of Benet, who – as well as being handy with his fists in a crisis, is also an accomplished knitter and baker – and I liked Rowan, Conn’s only friend in the Academicos. I admired Prineas’ world-building in this book and how things are lightly, but sufficiently, sketched. I thought the writing was good, if very slightly guilty of ‘telling, not showing’ at times, and I was intrigued by Wellmet, its governance and structure, and the nature of magic itself.

In short, highly recommended!

A locus magicalicus… don’t touch it!
(Artist: Antonio Javier Caparo)
Image: fr.levoleurdemagie.wikia.com

The Gently-Turning Mind

Years ago (I mean, years ago), I wrote a book. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it on the blog before – it’s the one that has languished ever since in an envelope, currently gathering dust on top of my bookshelves in the living room – but it still counts as my first attempt at writing a full-length book. I had thought of it as being so bad that it wasn’t worth revisiting, and that there was absolutely nothing of any value in its pages. I actually felt revolted by the very thought of it, like reading it would be humiliating; I couldn’t bear to touch it, let alone face it.

Over the past few days, though, I’ve felt my thoughts start to turn, gently, and I’m realising something interesting: this book is not bad enough to evoke such a visceral response in me. Something else was tied up with my memory of writing it, and I’ve been carefully unpicking this for the past while. Here’s what I’ve concluded: the very existence of this book reminded me of a painful time in my life, a time when I thought I’d never be happy again. Even though it’s a children’s story about good overcoming evil and bravery overcoming tyranny, I wrote it during a very dark time. I know that this story took shape in my mind at a time when joy seemed very far away.

I’m beginning to wonder if this is the reason I’ve never revisited the book, and not its lack of literary merit. I’m not saying it’s the new C.S. Lewis, but the story had an arc, and it had characters, and it had an epic conclusion. It worked. There’s a story there, waiting to be properly told.

Hey! I think I found the story…
Image: kernelsofwheat.com

Writing is such an emotional process. You can’t help but bring a little of yourself to everything you write, and – of course – the circumstances of your own life are going to have an effect on what you write, and how you remember it once years have passed. This book – I had called it ‘Emoriel’ all those years ago, but perhaps I’ll rename it – is so closely tied up in my personal darkness that it has taken me this long to even consider blowing the dust off it and having a look. I haven’t done it yet – as I write, the book is still in its wrappings, high on a shelf, lying quietly, waiting – but something tells me I will be doing it soon.

At the weekend, my husband and I started talking about this old book of mine. He has, of course, never read it, and sometimes mentions it in passing, probably in the hope that I’ll let him take a look at it if he drops a few hints here and there. Out of the blue, I told him: ‘You know – I think I might revisit it. I actually think I will have a look at rewriting it, once draft one of Tider is done.’ As he is wont, my husband smiled supportively at me, told me that would be a brilliant idea, and then we moved on with our evening.

I say this came ‘out of the blue’, but I wonder if it did, really. I’m sure this is something my brain has been working up to for a long time.

If you gather enough drops, you’ll eventually fill yourself to overflowing.
Image: markgeoghegan.org

As the book stands at the moment, from what I remember, it needs a lot of work. In fact, it needs so much work that a total rewrite is really my only option. It’s written in a style I loved at the time, one born out of the fact that, back then, I didn’t really read a lot of children’s books; my vocabulary and style was like something out of the 1930s. I based my ‘voice’ on the books I’d read as a kid – we’re talking Enid Blyton here – which, I’m pretty sure, would have most modern children weeping with laughter before they’d even finished the first paragraph. The only problem with that is, of course, that they’d be laughing at, rather than with, the story. There’s no mention of mobile phones, the internet, even video games; I think the most technological the book gets is when I mention ‘the radio’ (luckily, I didn’t call it ‘the wireless’), and our heroine gets to wear ‘galoshes and a sou’wester’. I’m wondering if I wrote this book in order to immerse myself in the joy of my own childhood reading, as a way to escape the reality of my life at the time; perhaps that’s why it has more in common with books of my grandparents’ generation than the current one.

All that can be fixed, though. I can bring what I’ve learned from ‘Eldritch’ and ‘Tider’ to bear on my old story, and I can cover the framework I built more than ten years ago with a bright new canvas, one which will hopefully be up-to-date and sparky, fun and good to read. I have already written this story to completion, so I know it can be done again; I have already created characters that I love, and I can easily breathe life into them again.

And – of course – I’m glad to think that, very soon, I’ll be able to take this book down again and face it once more. Opening the envelope in which it has stayed, quietly ruminating, for over a decade is far more than it seems. In opening that seal, I will be facing my own self, my own past, and laying to rest a lot of pain.

It couldn’t have happened any sooner than this.

Book Review Saturday

Today’s book review takes as its subject a book I’ve mentioned before on the blog, and one I’d been looking forward to for ages before I managed to pick it up last weekend. It’s the latest work from one of my all-time favourite authors, a writer whose books for me are always an automatic buy; I knew I’d love it before I’d even introduced my eyes to the opening lines.

So, really, this review is more of a love letter to the author.

And that author is Neil Gaiman.

Image: thesundaytimes.co.uk

‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ tells us the story of a lost and bewildered man, returning to the landscape of his childhood. As he begins to immerse himself in the lost people and places of his past, he tells himself – and, of course, the reader – a story about a pivotal summer in his life, the summer he was seven years old, and what happened to him. As he narrates, bits and pieces of his memory float back up to his consciousness; it’s like he has suppressed his memories underneath a layer of ‘growing up and moving away and making a life for yourself,’ but that summer remains at his core, a slumbering seed waiting for the right time to bloom.

The narrator is not (as far as I remember) given a name – the book is, of course, written in the first person, so this isn’t a problem for the reader. As an adult, he seems quite jaded, a little disillusioned with life, a man who has put a failed marriage behind him and whose three adult children have grown and gone and left him to deal with the trauma of a family funeral alone. Attending this funeral is the reason he has returned to his childhood home, and he drives – at first randomly, and then with purpose – through the small village in which he grew up, and eventually out onto the narrow country roads that lead to his house, the house his parents built, and in which another family are now living. He drives further down the lane – deeper into his memory and himself – and winds up sitting beside the duckpond at the heart of Hempstock Farm, the pond which Lettie Hempstock, a girl he hasn’t thought about for forty years, once told him was the ocean.

The narrator’s seven-year-old self tells us about the summer his parents took in a lodger, a South African opal miner who eventually steals their family car and, having lost all his money through gambling, decides to take his own life in it. This tragic event – and it is tragic, and sad, and described by the seven-year-old narrator with all the wide-eyed clarity of a child – would be bad enough by itself, but it is only the beginning of a horrifying sequence of events which will drag in not only the child, but everyone who lives on the lane. The miner’s decision to commit suicide has unleashed a horrifying magical force, a dark and sinister spirit which uses his death as a portal into the human world, and who takes up residence in the fields around the narrator’s house. This spirit, in its twisted way, wants to ‘give people what they want’ – the opal miner died because he had no money, and so, one day, the narrator wakes up choking, his throat on fire with pain. With great effort, he manages to pull out whatever has made its way into his neck. It turns out to be a large silver coin – a silver shilling.

This macabre and twisted way of trying to ‘help’ while hurting is the signature of this malevolent spirit. Luckily for the narrator and his family, though, the family who live at the end of the lane – the Hempstock women of Hempstock farm – are far more than what they seem. Their duckpond is an ocean, the oldest of them remembers the Big Bang, they have powers beyond description and wisdom beyond measure and courage beyond understanding. Lettie, the youngest (though that’s a meaningless term, in relation to these characters), is eleven to the narrator’s seven, and she takes him with her as she goes forth to confront the spirit. Unfortunately, they underestimate it, and their attempts to vanquish it only allow it to create a doorway into the human world, which it can use at will – and the doorway is located through the body of our narrator, our seven-year-old innocent, whose life and family instantly begins to crumble. The Hempstock women must regroup and rethink their tactics in order to fight it, and fight it they do.

This book is an expertly handled mingling of fantastical elements and minutely observed realism. For me, even as a person who adores fantasy and mythology and folklore, and particularly when they’re in the hands of Neil Gaiman, and despite the fact that magic and folklore is at the heart of this story, I felt the book was strongest when rooted in the real. The descriptions of the narrator’s family, and the ways in which this spirit attempts to worm* its way into the fabric of their home life, are so effective because we’ve already seen the love between the members of the family, which makes the coldness and hatred that starts to grow once they’ve been infected by the spirit even starker and more upsetting. The most powerful scene in the book by a country mile is the one in which the narrator’s father, overtaken by the spirit’s power, very nearly takes his son’s life – it chilled me to the marrow. It’s an unforgettable piece of writing.

Writing fantasy is no challenge to Neil Gaiman. The spirit, its manifestations, the horrifying ‘hunger birds’ who must be summoned in order to make an attempt to destroy it, the powers at the heart of the Hempstock family and the thrilling mystery that binds them together, as well as the sacrifices each member of the Hempstock family makes in order to ensure the survival of everyone else on the lane, are all marvellous. But, I can’t help thinking that Neil Gaiman can create this type of thing effortlessly – this sort of writing, this sort of thinking, is not difficult for him. It’s the touches of realism – the marital difficulties between the narrator’s parents, the relationship between him and his sister, the loneliness he feels when nobody turns up to his seventh birthday party – which elevate this book into a higher form of art.

I devoured ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane.’ I loved every word. If you enjoy excellent writing, wonderful storytelling, superb narrative framing, and a touch of scary magic topped with love, sacrifice and devotion, then this is the book for you.

Happy weekend, everyone. Read well, read often, read wisely…

*If you’ve read the book, please forgive the pun!