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1-Page Summary of The Ocean At the End of the Lane
Overall Summary
The narrator is driving to a funeral service. He remembers the house he grew up in, and how his parents knocked it down when he was 16 years old. The new house they built stands there now, but the farm at the end of the lane looks exactly as it did when Lettie lived there. She moved away before she went to Australia. When he arrives at her mother’s house, Mrs Hempstock asks if she knows him. The narrator says that she must be Mrs Hempstock because Lettie looked just like her grandmother (Old Mrs Hempstock). Then suddenly, everything comes back to him—Lettie’s ocean and what happened on their last day together…
The narrator is six years old when his family falls on hard times. To make money, they rent out the narrator’s bedroom to a new tenant. The narrator is sad because he loves the room but moves into his sister’s room instead. He and his sister fight about whether or not to keep the door open at night (the narrator is afraid of the dark). Not long after that, it’s time for him to celebrate his seventh birthday—but no one comes. After this sad occurrence, he immerses himself in books and toys until his father brings home a black kitten named Fluffy as a replacement for Monster, who was run over by a taxi.
The narrator’s father had brought home a comic book, and the narrator was very excited to read it. However, when he went outside to get the comic from his father’s car, he found that the car was gone. The police called his family later on to say that they’d found the stolen car at the end of their street. His parents made some burnt toast for him for breakfast and left with one of the policemen in order to check out where they could find his dad’s car. When they reached there, they saw that an opal miner had committed suicide inside it by hanging himself from a tree branch above them. A girl named Lettie appeared before them then and offered her help in getting rid of all these people so that she could take him away because she thought it would be better if he wasn’t around during this time since he might get scared or upset over what happened earlier. She took him back home with her after giving him porridge which tasted like seaweed soup according to him. Then Lettie showed up again while taking him out into a pond near their farmhouse which she claimed was really an ocean but much smaller than any other ocean on earth,and told about how when she was just born,she traveled across this ocean in a boat along with her mother and grandmother who were also witches (as well as having magical powers). Later on when asked by others about this incident,his father insisted oceans can’t be compared as small ponds.
The narrator receives a letter in the mail informing him that he won 25 pounds through Premium Bonds. The next day, the gardener discovers an old bottle of coins and money starts falling from the sky for no reason. The narrator wakes up with a silver shilling in his mouth. He knows it’s impossible to convince adults about this happening to him. Outside, Lettie tells him that someone is trying to give people money, but she doesn’t know who or why they are doing this. She makes pancakes for everyone at the farmhouse and asks them to help her find “her”.
Lettie is a girl who was born on the farm. She’s seen as strange by the other kids because she has magical powers and can do things like make animals talk to her. One day, Lettie tells the narrator that they need to find “her”: this creature made of cloth that flies around and hurts people. They finally find it in a field with plants shaped like snakes. The creature won’t tell them its name, so Lettie binds it up and takes away its ability to fly away from them. As they walk back home, Lettie pulls out one of those snake-like plants: it’s actually a kitten with white fur on her ear.
