Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Written by Neil Gaiman - Published in 2013

“I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were.”
Amid the hurried lives we lead - weddings and funerals are the punctuated pauses in between when we can recollect that which was, and how it used to be. The anonymous character we meet in the first chapter wanders away from a funeral, to a lane where he once lived, more than thirty years ago; he meanders to the end of the lane where his friend once lived, here he stops by a duck pond -
‘Lettie Hempstock’s ocean.
I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.’
The first of the memories we encounter begin with the poignant 7th birthday party – it would ring a bell in most minds, weren’t you nervous at that age –that you’d throw a party to which no one came? However, displaying surprising maturity for a seven year old - the child never tries to find out why no one turned up –“I did not need to ask them. They were not my friends, after all. They were just the people I went to school with.”
Like some quiet reticent kids, he has books for friends, and a cat called Fluffy. They were inseparable, the cat made up for the absence of human friends in the child’s life. But one day, the young person is introduced to death by the tragic loss of Fluffy (as a child many a reader would be reminded of how he was told ‘Rover’s in doggy-heaven’). And the opal miner in check shirt and thick pale gold chain thought he would make up for the loss of the beloved feline by getting a replacement - a ginger cat called Monster. The ill tempered cat lived with the child for a week, a week in which the memory of Fluffy may have felt betrayed by the angry substitute, yet the kid stoically continues to withhold his sorrow and dismay from the world outside (‘I wanted to cry for my kitten, but I could not do that if anyone else was there and watching me.’), after all - he still had a cat!




Gaiman draws on his own (and somewhat macabre) childhood memory of the loss of his parents’ car - in the book, the child discovers the car is stolen, and when the police get it back, he rushes to retrieve his copy of SMASH! with Batman, only to find it lodged under the corpse of the man who stole the car, and chose to then die in it. Upon further discovery, he learns it was the opal miner, who left a note:
 “To all my friends,
“Am so sorry it was not like I meant to and hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me for I cannot forgive myself.”
What was that again about black cats crossing one’s path?
Despite that very disturbing turn of events, the child finds a friend, not a book or an animal - but an apple cheeked, red-brown hair, gray-blue eyed girl from Hempstock farm (which was in the great Domesday Book survey executed for William the Conqueror in 1086), who gave him warm porridge with blackberry jam, and then led him to her ‘ocean’, gave him a  sixpence coin from the gut of  a dead fish (for luck), and  memories to last a lifetime.
The opal miner’s unhappy spirit  comes to haunt the street - and since he had loved money enough to steal it from his friends - his ghost starts to haunt people with ‘money trouble’, including the young boy.
The child is elated he has a handsome twenty five pounds inheritance, and coins dug up from his garden - but he wakes up choking in the night - a silver coin lodged in his throat. Lettie all knows grandmother, who was there ‘the day the moon came’, tells him the coin is new, although the date suggests it’s older. Lettie and ‘Him’ embark on an adventure to ‘Bind it, close its ways, send it back to sleep.” It - the opal miner’s spirit.
With instructions from Lettie to never let go of her hand, and the promise that she would protect him - the two are confronted by giant worms, gray raggedy creatures with nothing in them, and when they return - something is lodged in his foot. He sits in the bathroom, tugging into the hole with a pair of tweezers, and pulls out a dark and light gray, pink-streaked worm, which he lets go in the bath plug hole.
The worm makes a comeback in the form of Ursula, the housekeeper, who takes over his entire life, endearing herself to his family, to the extent; his father almost drowns him in the bath tub as she stands by watching. Most days, he’s trying to get away from Ursula’s prying eyes, and finally he manages to escape to the Hempstock Farm-where Granny Hempstock asks Ursula to return, she of course puts up a fight, but is killed by ‘varmints’ –who then want to kill the boy, because Ursula’s heart is still lodged in his foot. Lettie though, sacrifices her life, and saves him from death.  Her mother wades into the pond, with Lettie’s limp body in her arms, and she is finally laid to rest in her watery abode.
While still leading the obscure life of a child, he finds a black kitten with ‘unusual eyes’, and names her ‘Ocean’. When he came to, in the present, the boy was left with no memory of his escapades - and believes Lettie migrated to Australia; as he sat , freshly arrived from  his trip down memory lane, old Mrs. Hempstock pays him a visit. She tells him Lettie is still healing, not yet ready to awaken. As he leaves, he is peaceful, and his memories fade into the past.
Neil Gaiman’s wife Amanda “doesn’t really like fantasy”, so the modest 178-page turner novella for adults is a brilliant “memory meets magic” work of fiction – worth the eight year wait! The Master of Myth creates a melting pot of the supernatural, horror and allegory- the obsession we have with money and power, the deceit that permeates our lives, are underlying themes of the tale. The book has debuted at no.1 at the New York Times Best Seller List.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Written by Neil Gaiman - Published in 2013

Friday, September 20, 2013

Anansi Boys - A book by Neil Gaiman - Published in 2005

“The Dreamer awakes
The shadow goes by
The tale I have told you,
That tale is a lie.
But listen to me,
Bright maiden, proud youth
The tale is a lie;
What it tells is the truth.” ― Traditional folktale ending
“ANANSI”- the spider…miniscule, tiny, deadly. The Anansi (Nanzi, for short, and in our story-Nancy) lives in Florida, father to Fat Charlie, his accountant son, who craves the freedom to step out of his father’s shadow, maintaining the physical distance by living in South London.
Nancy Sr. (whom we last met in American Boys) is quite the ladies man, and whilst charming buxom members of the fairer sex one evening in a karaoke bar - he comes to a sticky end. 
Nancy Jr. - Fat Charlie travels to Florida to dispense with his filial duties, and is told by Mrs. Callyanne Higgler, a family friend that late Nancy Sr. was actually the reincarnation of the West African spider god Anansi. And before Charlie can start to believe he maybe endowed with some of the magical qualities his father had- the lady dampens his spirits and tells him of his spider-brother-Spider. In a drunken stupor, Charlie whispers to a lil’ arachnid he’d love a visit from his sibling.

In the morning Spider pays a visit, stepping in and out through an old picture. The swashbuckling, suave sibling is saddened and shocked to hear of their father’s demise. That evening, the two brothers drown their sorrows in a pub, and the next morning, as Charlie misses work, nursing a hangover, Spider appears in his guise at work. Here he pushes back the rug to see the dirt beneath it; the Messrs. Graham Coat Agency has been embezzling funds galore. He also discovers his brother’s lovely fiancĂ©e Rose Noah.
Performing his duties to the T, Spider sheds light on the financial irregularities at the Agency, and in order to get him out of the way, a fat cheque and holiday are planned. Off course this is a case of mistaken identity, doppelgänger gone bad. Fed up, Charlie travels once more to Orlando, to seek Mrs. Higgler’s help - she leads him to her friend, who, with some abracadabra-meets-bibbity-babbity-boo black magic, gets him to travel back in time - where he confronts creatures unwilling to help him, thanks to Nancy Sr. being such a cad and what not.
Finally, Bird Woman agrees to help in exchange for the Anansi bloodline. On the other hand, Maeve Livingstone, a harassed client of the Agency confronts Grahame with regard to her late husband’s swindled royalties, threatening to sue him. The wily serpent agrees to return the money, and as the poor woman is about to leave - he kills her mercilessly, hiding the body in a closet. The woman haunts the Agency, and refuses to go into the afterlife unless she is able to get her hands on Grahame Coats. She even meets the ghost of Anansi, who teaches her to use cleverness and skill instead of strength, to get what she wants.
Charlie is arrested for fraudulent financial practices and Spider tells the truth about himself - she is inconsolable and unforgiving. She sails away on a cruise with her mother, when she chances upon Grahame, and the pair is kidnapped by him, imprisoned in his basement. Spider is now aware that the constant attacks on his person have something to do with Charlie - he spirits him out in guise of his attorney Mr.Merryman, to Skopsie, where they reach the conclusion that they both stand to lose if the Anansi bloodline is compromised.
Charlie is freed from prison, and he helps recover Maeve’s body; he seeks Mrs. Higgler’s help to solve his travails, but is directed to Mrs. Dunwiddy who explains how she hexed him, that Spider and Charlie are two sides of the same coin. This charges Charlie to seek his ‘other half’, restores his tongue and the bloodline. However, Grahame is taken over by the fearsome Tiger, who plots to kill Rosie, thus getting even with Spider. But Anansi and Maeve get the better of him, and he is eliminated in the real world.
Charlie, heady with success, still at the beginning of Time, with the aid of Spider, shuts Grahame Coats and Tiger in a cave, sealing their fates. Coats  is now renamed “Stoats”, in keeping with his weasel - like nature. Charlie relinquishes all emotional ties with Rose, and she marries Spider - they have no children, an act of rebellion to antagonize his mother-in-law; Charlie finds a soul mate in Daisy Day, a policewoman he met at the pub, they have a son Marcus. Meanwhile, old Anansi looks on from beyond with approval at his offspring.
Neil Gaiman’s pen successfully blends fantasy with myriad shades of reality, lending an air of veracity. The Author has to his credit over twenty fantasy novels and short stories. He is known for his connotative and indirect approach in writing, most of his works are monomyths, where the hero is transported from this world to the next, where he, dauntless and unafraid, battles forces beyond his control.
The Book won the Locus, Mythopoeic, YALSA ALEX, and British Fantasy Awards in 2006. It has also been adapted as a radio play for the BBC World Service.

Anansi Boys - A book by Neil Gaiman - Published in 2005