Here's a snippet:
Peter and Wendy is [J.M.] Barrie’s novelization of a stage play, originally intended for adults but significantly altered for a child audience. The later Disney adaptation, Peter Pan, bears only a passing resemblance to the original story. Boully’s book retells the tale through the lens of memory, bringing the subtext of sexual and adulthood anxieties into the foreground. Tiger Lily, who competes for Peter’s attentions in the source text, is here even more overtly sexual, “her thong all encrusted with the little shells from the seashore…she doesn’t shave her pubes, and they’re all sticking out and out.” Wendy, who, as in the book, plays house with Peter in a kind of mock-marriage, wants a “marriage made more real” and is regularly associated with images of growing, pregnancy, and menstruation.
Also brought to the fore are the intentional and unintentional cruelties of Peter, about whom we are told: “this much is ever so real; this much isn't make-believe. Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes. He can do a great deal to you. For example, he can put a little something inside of you, and you will carry that for the rest of your life..."
Read the rest of the Hazelton's review at Devil's Lake, published by the good folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
And follow this link to read more about--perhaps even to purchase!--Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them.
