Peter Pan in Scarlet

I am a Peter Pan purist. It is my favorite children’s book, although I didn’t read it until I was legally (and practically) an adult. To my mind J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan stands with the greatest works of world literature. It is a brilliant book, but even more importantly it subtly takes on an incredibly large number of themes in wonderful and imaginative ways: the nature of time, mortality, violence, and love, while dealing with childhood’s inborn innocence, arrogance, and cruelty, as well as the fear (and ridiculousness) of adulthood. It is a comedic, tragic, and adventure-filled book. It insists on life’s impermanence, but through the sprite, trickster, or near-god Peter Pan, it believes in immorality.

It is not just the themes of Peter Pan that allow it to shine so brightly, but the characters. Peter is as powerful as a demi-god, as petty as a Greek God, and as childish as a child. He is full of arrogance, petulance, confusion, and unbridled joy. Everything is forgotten by him, yet he loves everything in its moment. Paired with Pan is one of literature’s greatest villains: Captain Jas Hook. How does one describe such a personality? He possesses the complexity of a character out of Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, yet remains still a rugged piratical children’s villain. He kills without conscience, yet goes to elaborate lengths to steal Wendy to be his mother. He is obsessed with time, appearance, and power, but mostly he desires to stand by the code of his early days in British boarding school. He can be a foppish clown and a brilliant adversary. J.M. Barrie does not shy away from making him sympathetic, as well as ridiculous. Yet with all his dualities one still believes in him fully, in fact he seems even more real through his contrasts; he is not allegorical—like Peter representing childhood—but a full-fledged larger-than-life persona persisting in a children’s book.

Finally, Peter Pan is a dark, violent, and morbid book. Our first view of Neverland includes every group—lost boys, pirates, Indians, and beasts—pursuing the other with intent on bloodshed. And blood is shed. Hook kills a member of his own crew on his opening; Wendy is shot by a very real arrow. Later, there is a great war between the Indians and pirates that results in several casualties, and Peter has no moral difficulty killing pirates one by one. Finally, when Peter confronts his own mortality, he proclaims: “To die will be an awfully great adventure!” If only we could all have this view. Hook’s more adult response to death is to go into the gaping jaws full of egotistical love and self-righteousness by proclaiming, “Bad form!” as his last words. The darker tones of Peter Pan usually finds its way OUT of adaptations—very unfortunately. As a culture we believe children don’t, or shouldn’t, think about death. Moreover we do not want to recognize the callousness and cruelty of children.

I hope in proclaiming the various reasons why I love this book so well, I am not making more of Peter Pan than is warranted. I hope I am not bullshiting (as is susceptible to English majors), for this is a book that should bring joy not overtly analytical triteness. This is a fun book to read, never numbing or trying.

With my love and admiration for Peter Pan declared, I came to reading its first ‘official’ sequel with some expectations. I came with hope, though not necessarily confidence, that it would preserve the spirit of Peter Pan—I had heard Geraldine McCaughrean on NPR and was impressed—but I also preserved a hefty amount of doubt. I pretty much figured it would dumb down the content of Peter Pan and bastardize the characters as every rendition/sequel/offshoot of Peter Pan does, from Disney’s beloved film to Spielberg’s Hook, from the popular musical to the most recent live action film.

Geraldine McCaughrean came to write this sequel through unusual circumstances. The children’s hospital which owns the rights to Peter Pan (given them by Barrie) held a contest, which Ms. McCaughrean won against innumerable other writers based on an opening chapter and a rough outline. From this first chapter it is immediately obvious why Ms. McCaughrean won. She displays an uncanny knack for resurrecting both the style and tone of Peter Pan. It is quite remarkable. Of course, there are times in the book when one can see that McCaughrean is trying altogether too hard to make the book Barrie-ish, but for the most part her style represents his well. I found this unexpected; I was surprised a children’s publisher would be open to a style so witty, intelligent, and wry, so full of truths hidden in fantastic images and ideas. Many children’s books today are written in straightforward, simplistic, action-oriented language that this throwback to the turn-of-the-century was a relief.

I don’t want to give away too much about the book, in case you have a mind to read it. But the first few chapters—pre-Neverland—are hilarious. McCaughrean captures the ridiculous in adults facing childhood, and I love that instead of the Lost Boys they are now the Old Boys. As well, her use of a children playing dress-up is employed extremely well (a theme throughout this novel). The action in Neverland I will not comment on too greatly, so as not to give away much, but I will say that her use of Neverland is wide and varied, and, of course, as with every sequel she creates new places to visit. Some of these feel too stretched from Barrie’s original, others fit perfectly.

What about the characters? With much relief, I discovered that McCaughrean cared greatly for Barrie’s originals. The plot she creates is fully wrapped around the personalities of Peter and Hook; in fact from the arrival in Neverland to the end of the novel there is no turn that doesn’t involve these adversaries. Peter Pan’s journey—with the Lost Boys and Wendy—is extremely interesting, because McCaughrean is able to produce temporary change in the unchangeable boy, and she does it without breaking any rules (namely: Peter Pan doesn’t grow old and doesn’t change of his own will). Her characterization of Peter throughout is well done; I felt it wasn’t always as strong as it should be, but still proved admirable.

But it was her portrayal of Hook that surprised me most. When I heard on NPR that she would be bringing Hook back for the sequel I scoffed. The man was eaten by a giant crocodile! I imagined she would have him reappear wit a flimsy excuse like: “he threw me up” or “I never actually fell in its mouth, it just looked like I did” or “the crocodile didn’t want to eat me; it just wanted to play”. I thought it would be better to leave Hook as was (dead) and recreate some new adversary. But, I was very wrong. I still marvel at how she did it. Hook returns and slithers his way into the story, and when we finally discover how it is that he has survived, it is a moment of great believability and completely coherent with the darker natures of Neverland. McCaughrean’s Hook is a marvel. He has lost some of the ridiculousness and pomposity he has in Peter Pan (i.e. he has grown up a bit), but he keeps the obsessions, the grim self-centeredness, and the pathetic inadequacies; he retains both his villainy and his sympathy. Incredibly, McCaughrean not only preserves Hook (amazing in itself), but also matures him through suffering. Hook plays such a role in the plot of Peter Pan in Scarlet that the book becomes almost more about Hook than Pan. This is surprising again, but just as well: Hook is rich enough to carry the novel. And his ultimate demise (or is it?) proves so poignant, so perfect that one feels as though J.M. Barrie whispered it in McCaughrean’s ear.

Finally, as shown by Hook's ressurection, Peter Pan in Scarlet does not shy from Neverland’s dark side. It is a grief ridden island, still filled with pointless violence and bloodshed. Still perfectly dangerous while perfectly adventurous. McCaughrean brings a new element to Neverland’s darkness, however; she brilliantly brings post-World War I England into the story, touching its tragedy and allowing No Man’s Land to run into Neverland. One of the most moving moments is one line in the middle of nowhere regarding one of the original characters.

I read this book in three days while staying in a cabin in the Minnesota north woods. To get to the cabin we had to walk across a frozen lake, which every morning sported new wolf tracks. Snow blanketed the ground and shadowed the trees. Cinnamon-colored squirrels chased one another competing for seeds. It was a beautiful place in which to read any book. But a perfect place for the first quality depiction of Neverland since Barrie's original.

**My copy (in photo) is entitled Peter and Wendy (Barrie's original title in 1911), but now it is almost always published under Peter Pan.

Borrowed from the library.

Peter Pan in Scarlet

By: Geraldine McCaughrean

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2007

Hardcover, 310 pages

1416918086

Watership Down

My roommate owns a rabbit who must make an appearance here at some time, and what better moment then alongside Watership Down, Richard Adams' lapine masterpiece? My roommate's rabbit's name is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, or Justice (pronounced Eustace) for short. He spends much of his day in her room, chilling, but in the evening he comes out. He loves to be petted (which I find strange in a rabbit) and he performs the most wonderful little tricks, well not so much tricks as actions: he cleans his ears, wiggles his nose, chews at everything, and when in the right mood will leap twisting into the air or run wildly in circles.

Eustace did not inspire me to finally read Watership Down, I've been meaning to do that since I started working at the bookstore, but living with a rabbit certainly pushed the book to the head of my list. One of the great joys of this novel is that the rabbits are not fully anthropomorphized; they are rabbits. They are given human-like personalities of course, and from time to time allowed to puzzle out things that one would imagine a rabbit never could, but they still retain a distinct rabbitness. In fact, the very societies presented--different as they are--are credibly explained byway of the natural rabbits' lifestyle.

I had always thought of Watership Down as a seventies, hippie-inspired novel, an allegory for what the world may be and what it should be. For awhile, this made me avoid the book; I was generally uncomfortable with allegory (and still am). While Watership Down can be construed as an allegory for peace and love and freedom, it is not necessarily so. Like any great piece of work, the book stands by itself, free of any biased allegories and symbols. Certainly, themes like the quest for peace and prosperity, the importance of individual freedom, or the debilitating features of a rigid society abound. As well, courage, intelligence, daring, and leadership are traits that are exalted through such characters as Hazel-rah and Bigwig; finally, Fiver carries the importance of deeply felt instinct. But none of these themes or traits apply directly to any contemporary society or personages; there is no one-to-one ratio which is what allegory insists upon. Hazel-rah is not Churchill and Woundwort is certainly not Hitler. Such connections can be made, but any surety in making them is nonsense.

One of the aspects of Watership Down that I found so appealing was Adams lush use of language. 'Silflay' became my favorite word of the week; it has a lovely sound and it is employed to full effect, so that both its sound and meaning become delightfully routine by the end of the novel. As well, the addition of 'rah' behind the rabbit leader's name is powerful and beautiful. Just compare the name Hazel to Hazel-rah; the latter has far more maturity and potency. I loved that the rabbits' language often had an almost Arabic sound to it. Aspects like this ground the novel, and make it far more than some kid's story about a bunch of talking bunnies.

In most 'questing' books, which this one definitely is, the quest the heroes undertake is often for a treasure of some kind, to rescue someone, or achieve a special power. Here, the quest proves far simpler, but also far closer to our own lives. Hazel-rah and his disparate, yet courageous, band of followers are not looking for glory; their quest is for a simple life. They--like most of us--want to be safe, loved, and live in the manner they choose. They are, after all, rabbits--meaning they are a prey species --so there is a constant tension in their lives between the level of ever-present danger (real or imagined) and the level of security they have achieved. Their needs are simple, yet in the novel they must go to great lengths to achieve them. And in the end, they do. You come to understand the rhythmic (even harmonious) nature of these animals. Their lives will become routine and yet beautiful: this is what they are striving for throughout the novel, this is why they journey.

Watership Down is a sprawling vast novel. It is a novel that to me connects back to the great novels of the European Nineteenth Century; in those, as in Watership Down, there is a feeling of the story at times careening away from its writer, of its very largeness allowing us to see glimpses and moments that would never be allowed in a more controlled work of art. In their very nature of natures they are diffuse, they spread and drip and fall where one does not expect them. But often their genius lies in this, this careening magnitude that attempts to capture not one aspect of life, but everything.

Book borrowed from work.

Watership Down

By: Richard Adams

Scribner, 2005

Paperback, 496 pages

ISBN: 0743277708

Breath

In college I minored in history. I now think that I probably should have double-majored: english and history (maybe tripled, theatre). Since graduating, my fascination--obsession may be a better word--with history has only grown. It's incredible to wonder at the scale of lives that have come before ours, each one unique and important. There are so many stories in those multitudinous lives. I think it would be nearly impossible to be a good reader (which is what I strive for) and be bored by the past. In fact I doubt if it's possible to be fully engaged with the world, and be bored by the past.

I am always surprised how history receives a bad rap in our culture (but then I am also puzzled by how 'intelligence' is given a bad rap too). Like math and science, history is usually considered a boring subject, only for specialists, i.e. geeks, nerds, and the like. At most history to us is a source of entertainment (i.e. movies) or a harmless hobby and not illumination. A basic example is the amount of not only badly made historic films, but also the amount of inaccuracy in Hollywood. A film may cost three hundred million, but none of this seems to go into any actual research. There are of course exceptions: Master and Commander comes immediately to mind. But as usual I am digressing, let me just say that history--while always entertaining--is more than entertainment, and the past deserves more respect and curiosity than is usually granted it.

I don't think Donna Jo Napoli is well known outside of the YA market; this is a shame. From the two novels I have read of hers, she is a sublime novelist of history. She is a masterful storyteller with a style that punches by way of its simplicity. Using just a few sentences she can craft historical places and times that prove both recognizable and entirely alien. I imagine any run-of-the-mill time traveler would undergo a similar experience. Most of her novels take familiar fairy-tales or myths and attempt a new spin on them while infusing raw and gritty historical 'reality' over most of the fantastical elements (in fact it is only really when Napoli attempts 'fantasy' that her stories slip a bit and fade).

Breath is a retelling of the medieval story of the pied piper who stole away Hamelin's rats (and children) by music. But really Breath only focuses on this traditional part of the story in the last fifty or so pages, and it is the previous two hundred that I found truly enthralling. Here we see a small, 13th Century German town and farmstead recreated in brief, yet utterly believeable, detail (a scene in which a grandmother and grandson make a sparrow-pie dinner sticks out). Salz--our narrator crippled with cystic fibrosis--tells his story in heart-breaking, stark prose. One minute he's playing with his new kitten, and the next he's stricken with tremendous, life-threatening pain, but the change is so abrupt and simple, the reader hardly recognizes it until they are in the midst of the pain, with Salz.

The bulk of the book deals with the slow destruction of Hamelin as a mysterious illness overtakes one household after another. The disease is blamed on a sudden increase in rats--hence the piper. But the disease takes on a form that may be even more terrifying than the black plague (which had not yet reached Europe from Asia in 1284 when the novel takes place). This plague instead causes night-madness: hallucinations, sexual deviance, explosive violence. Salz proves immune to this sickness (whose scientific nature is explained thoroughly in an Afterward by Napoli), and it is through these innocent eyes that we watch his family, and the whole town, suffer a fate worse than death. It is a nightmarish Jekyll-and-Hyde vision, gut-wrenching and haunting. And Napoli protrays it with such care and simplicity that the terror rises almost unbeknown. Certainly, it is unwelcome, even by the reader: one cannot help but react to the town's devastation with even more disbelief than does Salz.

As with Bound, the other Napoli novel I have read, the book loses some of its focus and even believability in the last few chapters. By hewing so close to the Pied Piper story, she gets herself stuck in a situation that is just not believable, and starkly so against the gritty realism of the rest. Still the book is harrowing, affective, and give you a better glimpse of the 13th century than almost any movie and most other books. Rather meant for adults or children. However, if you're looking for a good medieval antithesis to Breath (that's still every bit as wonderful and accurate) check out Adam of the Road, a wondrous, beautiful tale of a boy who loses his father and dog in the medieval England.

If Breath sounds like it shouldn't be meant for children, that's probably right. In my mind this is really a 14 and up YA novel, however a mature 12-year-old could probably handle it. But this brings up one of the depressing issues surrounding "Young Adult Literature" (and there are many). More and more books are being classified young adult simply by the age of the narrator or main character and not neccesarily based on content and/or the author's desired audience. Donna Jo Napoli is a wonderful writer for young adults, but she is also a wonderful writer for any age. But how many adults take YA literature into consideration when choosing their next book? Of course, the majority of YA novels are crap, but this doesn't mean the gems should be stuck in the same category. Having spent the last nine months reading and re-reading children's literature, I can safely say that a lot of it deserves wider attention than it receives and some of it deserves far less attention than it already gets (i.e. Gossip Girls series, The Clique series, and any of the other trashy, nullifying kid lit. out there).

Well that is enough of this rambling entry where I seemed to cover everything (and resolve little) from American society's take on history to the actual book to various issues in classifying books as Young Adult. Next time (Shakespeare returns) I'll try to focus a little more.

(Book borrowed from work; picture above is of the hardcover edition, because I think that cover is far better)

Breath

By: Donna Jo Napoli

Simon Pulse, June 2005

Paperback, 272 pages

ISBN: 068986177X

Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling

A brief word on reading in New York City's subways. First, it is wonderful. Every weekday I have on average one-and-a-half to two-hours of pure reading time. That's a pretty significant chunk (1/12 of a day). However, there is another plus to reading on the subway: it is a way to hide. My book is a tortoise's shell, whenever I want I just pop my head in-between the pages. This allows me to avoid high school tourists singing " Santa Fe" from Rent (although that was actually very amusing), crazy men screaming and ranting that MLK Jr. was a whoremonger, kids selling candy for god-knows-what, and of course the cursory panhandler. It also allows me to take a breather from New York's freneticism, its overwhelming characters, and the poisonous vapors that come through whenever the doors open.

That brings me to: drawbacks. Let's be honest, reading on the subway is not sitting at home in late-afternoon light with a cup of lemon tea listening to classical music. Reading on the subway often means reading the same sentence two dozen time because A) you were eaves-dropping on some suit's take-over-the-world conversation, B) your eyes were straying to a dread-locked dude playing Mario Brothers, C) your focus (though not your eyes) was pulling to the woman who is proclaiming that Christ is coming, or D) you just have no idea what train is what on the weekend. In other words, sometimes the shell isn't as dark or thick as I want it to be, and despite my best efforts I still can't avoid being drawn into the daily show that is New York City.

Another reality: for subway bibliophiles you have to choose book size wisely. For example, I have to keep checking out manageable copies of Shakespeare's plays from the library because I simply can't cart around the hefty Complete Works. Finally, by reading on the subway you must accept that people will look at what you are reading and judge you accordingly. I thought about reading the Bible (since I'm trying to finish that as well) but then I realized a portion of the populace would judge me as an over zealous-Christian-fundie-rightwing-missonary while others would want to compare with me their 'finding Jesus' stories. I decided to avoid such associations, and read Monster Blood Tattoo instead.

Before I begin my Monster Blood consideration, I should explain my job. I currently work as a Children's Book Buyer at an independent bookstore. For the purposes of these pages, this means I will be writing about a significant amount of children's literature. This also means I have access to tons of books before they go on sale. Monster Blood Tattoo releases in May. Currently, I am reading a galley; it's an unfinalized version of the book that publishers send around to allow stores to review the book before they decide whether or not to buy.

I have one chapter left of Monster Blood Tattoo, but feel sufficiently well informed to write about the book (which got the Australian writer a six-figure deal and a trilogy). Let me start off by saying that I love fantasy. It's one of the only 'genre-fictions' I am drawn to regularly. On the other hand, I am pretty picky about my fantasy. No one touches Tolkien. C.S. Lewis is a genius. And contemporaneously, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series and Harry Potter are the only fantasies I read consistently.

Monster Blood Tattoo while enjoyable does not belong in the realm of the aforementioned. It contains an incredibly well crafted and pretty original (considering how difficult it is to be original in fantasy or sci-fi anymore) world. Apparently, Mr. Cornish spent many years crafting the world before drafting the story. This is not surprising, the detail is staggering and for the most part believable. The world is most closely comparable to a few Miyazaki films and the later Final Fantasy video games.

Fantasy is known to a genre of pretty awful writing, but D.M. Cornish does not fall into that category. His style is entertaining and interesting, his dialogue especially crisp and character-driven (I loved it when his monsters opened their mouths). Still, his writing does lack something, a kind of visceral (and if not that, mythical) quality that makes us delude ourselves into believing this is a real place and not just some planet misting in Cornish's mind.

While the writing was overall pretty good, the plot lacked some punch. The beginning drew me, as basically the story is simple and one I particularly enjoy: child-protagonist on a journey into the world. Where, of course, things are neither what they seem nor what he expects. Cornish does a nice job of instilling his hero, Rossamund (a boy with a girl's name) with wide-eyed wonder and, when needed, shock at the world's cruelty. Also, it is nice to read a fantasy that almost feels prosaic, so far our hero is not a CHOSEN one; he is not out to save the world or any such thing; he posses no remarkable abilities or objects; he's just a Candide out for a wander (however there are hints of chosen-one, world-saving to come...I hope not). My large complaint with the plot is that by the end (or by the near-end) not enough has happened. It feels like I should only be halfway through the first book, when instead I am 18 pages from the end. Loose ends are tied up far too easily and conveniently, characters either discarded or returned in an altogether unbelievable style. The climax is lackluster. This is not to say the book is rotten by any means. I enjoyed it quite a lot, though I am not sure if I'll have enough reserve interest to read the next volume whenever it appears.

I must close with a word about the title. How about: what the hell were they thinking. Monster Blood Tattoo sounds like a very crappy video game or a very crappy comic book. If this book wants to be a new serious contender in the ever-more-crowded genre of young adult fantasy, it should not have a title that would make even an undiscerning thirteen-year-old snicker. Why? Why? Why? The title of the series does make (some) sense once you read the book, but that doesn't really matter, because it's the first impression here that sticks.

It makes me wonder where Lord of the Rings would stand today if Tolkien, as he initially intended, had called his protagonist Bingo instead of Frodo?



Some alternative titles:

The Lord of the Rings -- My Year Saving Middle Earth

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- Jesus Allegory in a Wardrobe

The Wheel of Time -- The Apocalypse, Again


(Galley, courtesy of Penguin)


Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling

By: D.M. Cornish

Penguin, 2006

Paperback, 432 pages

ISBN: 0399-24638-X