A man returns to his childhood home after attending a funeral. He remembers his life on this farm. As a young boy his parents had to let their house to renters, because they had no money. It was the first time he felt scared but wouldn’t be the last time. One renter died. That’s when he meets Lettie Hempstock and her family.
She and her family protect him from the evil that begins. Ursula Monkton, a supernatural person disguised as a human, arrives. She is evil which in the narrator’s point of view, further stresses the point that adults or any authority figure can be scary. But Lettie explains to him that adults are just children in bigger bodies. They are scared just like them.
Years later or so he thinks, he returns to visit the Hempstocks. He realizes he must visit them when he’s in need of compassion and his life is out of control. He doesn’t remember earlier visits, but Old Mrs. Hempstock reminds him. As an adult, he realizes it’s the people who have helped him throughout his life. Those people whom we never forget, they are locked away in our memories. And as for Lettie she is not gone, she is also checking on him to see if her greatest sacrifice was worth it.
“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Librarian a la mode 