Peter and Wendy

Peter and Wendy is not the story you think you know. Yes, there is a boy who can fly, an island of make-believe, pirates, and Indians. But J. M. Barrie's 1911 novel carries a weight that the Disney film barely hints at: the quiet horror of refusing to grow up, and the grief that choice entails. Wendy, Margaret, and the boys in the Bloomsbury nursery hear a knock on the window one spring night, and everything changes. They fly away to Neverland, where days are spent fighting pirates and making maps of imaginary islands. But time works differently there, and when Wendy eventually longs for home, she discovers that Peter has already forgotten her, has forgotten all the others who once loved him. He is eternal, and that is his tragedy. This is a book about the unbearable sweetness of childhood, the way memory distorts what we loved, and the impossible choice between staying young forever and becoming someone who can love back. It will make you weep for the Lost Boys, for Tiger Lily, for Wendy, and for Peter, who is charming and careless and utterly alone.