Forever young, sadly

Over the past two decades, Neil Gaiman has won a reputation for telling tales that excite, provoke and cross genres with ease: graphic novels, children’s writing, fantasy, screenplays, science and literary fiction.

Gaiman’s persona also combines mystery and accessibility. He embraced social media when most of his peers were still tapping away at their typewriters. His tally of two million Twitter followers far exceeds that of many A-list celebrities. In short, Gaiman is the model of a modern bestselling author. Which leads us to his new novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. A fairy tale that is two parts bildungsroman to one part adult reverie, the reader is offered frequent insights into Gaiman’s imagination.

Towards the end, our hero, an unnamed young boy, experiences a vision that is both terrifying (“a thin layer of birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger”) and ecstatic (“I saw the world from above and below. I saw that there were patterns and gates and paths beyond the real. I saw all these things and understood them and they filled me, just as the water of the ocean filled me. Everything whispered inside me. Everything spoke to everything, and I knew it all.”)

It’s easy to suspect these final words are intended as the conclusion to a portrait of the artist as a young Neil Gaiman – how a childhood marked by loneliness, rare but intense relationships, and the mysterious behaviour of adults moulds an imagination prone to fantasy and escapism. “I knew it all” signals a young boy whose need to be in control inspires him to create his own moral and aesthetic universe when all around is falling to pieces: his parents argue about money and work; his father seems to be conducting an affair with a nasty, demonic nanny; and our narrator is picked on at school by boys who will one day ask him to sign their copies of American Gods. Sadly, “I knew it all” also hints at a sickly-sweet, over-confident, adolescent self-obsession that underlies the story.

Perhaps lines shouldn’t be drawn between children’s writing and adult fiction, but does that mean there are no differences at all?

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is keen to be taken seriously. “It has been eight years since his last novel for adults, the Sunday Times bestseller Anansi Boys,” Gaiman’s publishers are trumpeting. The story’s self-consciously mature and sombre mood backs this up. Our narrator, unnamed although “Neil Gaiman” might suffice, carries whiffs of maturity. He appears, Hamlet-like, in mourning weeds, grieving a loss also unnamed: a parent, perhaps?

He is a father, a divorcee, and an artist, although again the narrative isn’t telling about any of these: “I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.” However, like so much else in the novel, this gives the impression of profundity without really saying anything at all. Instead of clarity we get a patented Gaimanesque dying fall. Instead of showing us character, we receive sound and fury signifying, well, not very much.