Once invited, always welcome. Isn’t that his way?

 

What if the tale of Peter Pan wasn’t so innocent after all?…

Set many years after the events of the original Peter Pan narrative in which Wendy Darling and her brothers are snatched away to the other-worldly realm of Neverland. This book takes the child-like whimsy most feel towards the timeless story and flips it on its head.

Wendy Darling is now a grown woman, with a husband and an inquisitive, intelligent daughter, Jane. Enduring and surviving trial after trial since her fateful adventures with The Boy Who Could Fly (which Wise details in a series of flashbacks scattered throughout the book, punctuating Wendy’s journey in the present), now she must face one more.

Peter has kidnapped Jane, mistaking her for her mother. The story follows Wendy’s rescue mission, taking her back to the magical land from her childhood to save her daughter from becoming Peter’s new ‘Wendy’. Trapped forever as another reluctant ‘mother’ to Pan and his Lost Boys.

While it occasionally feels as though Wise has omitted some parts of the Peter Pan lore that might bugbear fans of the original story (the fairies, for one example. Which for me felt like a bit of a missed opportunity considering the dark, sinister style Wise was going for. Come on, the opportunity to portray twisted, murderous, Pre-Victorian faerys was right there!) but other than that, this story is an intriguing retelling from a more adult perspective. With Wendy Darling as protagonist of this gritty feminist re-imagining, the novel centers around themes of abandonment, trauma, growth and a mother’s indomitable determination to protect her child.

In this twisted take on The Boy Who Never Grew Up, the reader confronts the once charming, now eerie, notion of a magical boy who has control of an entire enchanted world under his impetuous whims, which is, perhaps, not as harmless as we all remember…

 

(CONTENT WARNINGS: Contains abuse, mental health struggles and child death)

 

Written by Niamh Bennett