Better Dead

Andrew Riach abandons his quiet Scottish village for the relentless noise of London, carrying dreams of becoming a private secretary and the tangled memory of Clarrie, the woman he may or may not love. The city offers him nothing but rejection, loneliness, and the grinding awareness that ambition without connection is just another form of drowning. Barrie's forgotten novel, a dark precursor to the whimsy that would later make him famous, grapples with what it means to be young, ambitious, and utterly alone in a world that refuses to notice you. This is not Peter Pan. This is the hollow ache of a man who wonders if he's already missed whatever chance he had. Sparse, unsettling, and strangely prescient about the modern condition.