Peter And Wendy - A Review

A mounted photograph from “The Castaway Boys of Black Lake Island”, one of the inspirations behind the tale of "Peter And Wendy"

This review is part of my effort to write down a few words for every book that I read.

“Peter And Wendy” is the children’s book by J. M. Barrie which, along with the play, inspired the classic Walt Disney animation, “Peter Pan”. I was motivated to read the book because Gretchen Rubin, the book author, and self-professed book lover recommended it. Also, I really enjoy historic children's literature. Disclosure, I have not yet seen the Disney film so I cannot provide much comparison with it.

What I initially found fascinating about the book was it’s backstory. The author, J.M. Barrie was a successful playwright in England who eventually formed a tight-knit friendship with several young boys and their widowed mother, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies in the 1890s. The imaginative stories he invents for the boys to play-act later became the basis for “the boy who never grew up”.

The friendship between J. M. Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies family was famously deep and unusual. The author, himself, was in a sexless marriage, and Sylvia, the mother, was young, attractive and widowed. However, their relationship never progressed beyond a close familial friendship. This was probably because Barrie was a gay man, although his sexuality was never identified conclusively. Nevertheless, their relationship was so close that Sylvia eventually granted Barrie guardianship of her children upon her early death from cancer.

The family was deeply imaginative, and they enthusiastically took part in the playacting Barrie initiated. And the playing took on a vibrant intensity that I think was unusual. For example, The “Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island”, a novel that is enshrined at the rare books library at Yale, illustrates their adventures with mounted photographs and shows their deep investment to fantasy life. The deepness of their friendships, and their deep commitment to their fantasy life was eventually portrayed in the movie, “Neverland”, starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet.

As for the book itself, I found it very well-written, laugh out loud funny, and not a little bit weird. The book is full of hallucinatory images that could have been the result of a drug-induced mind. I found it curious that the play preceded the book since many of its surreal scenes could not have been reproduced on a theater stage. For example, the Lost Boys enter and exit their underground home by shimmying up and down tree holes like worms. The father of Wendy imprisons himself inside their dog’s kennel. So serious is his commitment to inhabiting the kennel that he even goes to work and to fancy parties while inside the kennel.

Lastly, I found the book’s attitude towards Never Land, and to fantasy, to be a little ambiguous. The whole assertion is that children’s imaginations are real, Never Land is real, and it is only because we stop believing as adults that we can no longer see Peter Pan, or go back to Never Land. However, while the children are in Never Land, they acknowledge that some of their play is NOT real. Sometimes they go to sleep hungry from the lack of real food, or when Peter Pan insists on eating pretend food. When the boys kill pirates, or when the Indians die, the deaths are taken lightly, as it would whenever children play. Peter Pan is the only character who is fully committed to their shared reality.