Well I have to say we have another Neil Gaiman Male Protagonist here ! Basically the bloke does nothing except sit on a fence. We know very little about him, now old he is, what he’s done with his life – even whose funeral it is that he’s just been to. Even in the main childhood flashback sequence, it seems that’s he’s continuously reacting to events rather than setting them in motion. The only time he actually does something positive, it has disastrous consequences. Though that is partly the whole point of the book – the powerlessness of being a child in an adults universe.
The other thing that struck me is that this isn’t a Neil Gaiman book. I’ve only read a few of his (and none of the comicbook stuff), but the narrative style of Ocean is quite noticeably different. In fact, this is as close to a Diana Wynne Jones book as makes no difference. Diana of course was, in many ways, Neil’s mentor, and she died not long before Ocean was published. So I’m not sure if this is an intentional tribute or not. It is a very good DWJ nook though.
[MINOR SPOILERS]
Ocean has elements of a number of DWJ stories. The whole awakening of suppressed memories business is reminiscent of “Fire and Hemlock” (Hempstock ?) ; the 1930/40s girls stories remind me of ”The Lives of Christopher Chant”, and the idea of autobiographical childhood reminiscences having to be written as fantasy otherwise no-one would believe them Is much like “Time of the Ghost”.
Having said all that, I know a large amount about the protagonist because he is me ! There is so much here that ties up with my own experience of growing up in the 1960s it’s unbelievable. In the end I had to Google to find out how old Neil is – and he’s almost exactly one year younger than me.
So if you take out the fantasy elements this is my childhood in print. In fact, you don’t even need to remove all the fantasy. We grew monsters at the end of our garden- literally. Plants that were the nearest living thing to Triffids. There was a house that I had to leave when I was 10 – I guess that was the end of my childhood, though I didn’t realise it at the time. There was also an older house in a large garden, where my mother grew up, and I lived until I was 3. I remember the house, but not living there. The only difference is that both these houses still exist, though in nothing like the form they used to. There is even the love of all things Gilbert & Sullivan – though my own favourite was always Pirates of Penzance. There was even a (completely forgotten) Lettie Hempstock in my life.
[ MAJOR SPOILER]
My copy of Ocean has an interview with Neil at the end. And I’m SO glad that he’s intending to bring back Lettie at some stage. She deserved better that to be sacrificed so some wimp (and I speak from experience, remember) could live. Reconciliation with the protagonist would be nice, but then again she would still be 11 wouldn’t she, and he would be in his 50s. In fact I suspect Lettie can only come back to life once the protagonist dies. And I’m thinking that there is only one Hampstock woman – we just see her at 3 different stages of her life, folded back on herself though time.
And, finally, I now can’t stop singing the nightmare song from Iolanthe !!
Oh yes, and why did I keep thinking the action took place in the area around Luton, rather than Sussex ? [ That’s not to do with own experience – I grew up in Derbyshire ]
