Secondary Character Saturday: Lettie Hempstock, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

If only the “He” had held onto Lettie’s hand a little bit more firmly…

WHO: Lettie Hempstock

FROM: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Cover art for The Ocean at the End of the Lane [Image courtesy NPR]

PUBLISHED: June 18, 2013

PROS: Kind, powerful, brave, compassionate, mysterious, plucky…

CONS: Not quite cautious enough when it comes to flapping burlapy evil creatures

MOST SHINING MOMENT: I wont give away her MOST shining moment. But I will tell you her second to the MOST shining moment… which is when she stands up the big flapping burlapy evily creature and demands that it/she leave the Hempstock farm.

WHY I CHOSE LETTIE: A beautifully written female adolescent heroine… how could I not choose her? Lettie is marvelously kind to the unnamed main character in this book, but she’s never syrupy about it. She protects and cares for him (much better than his family does) and he has the gumption and pluck of many other female teen characters I can think of (*cough* Bella Swan). “The struggle between Lettie’s family and this evil force takes on darkly beautiful, dreamlike proportions.” [NPR.org]

Gaiman has written another wonderful book. This one is catalogued as adult, but it lies somewhere in the dreamy zone between growing up and grown up. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a relatively quick read (compared to American Gods or Anansi Boys and, perhaps because its protagonist is a child, it reminded me of his brilliant and haunting children’s book Coraline. Please add this to your to read book list. It is funny and scary and mysterious and sad and lovely.

For those of you keeping score this is not my first Neil Gaiman Secondary Character. I did SPIDER from Anansi Boys a while back. What can I say? As long as Gaiman keeps writing wonderful drawn characters they are going to keep showing up here.

English writer Neil Gaiman. Taken at the 2007 Scream Awards. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• Secondary Character: Spider from Anansi Boys
• Neil Gaiman Thought of the Day
• To read a review of The Ocean at the End of the Lane by The Side of Wonder  click HERE
• To read Lynn Reynolds’ take on Gaiman’s 8 Rules to Writing click Here
• To read Lynn’s review of Ocean click Here

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