{"id":4090,"date":"2025-06-25T01:28:58","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T09:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4090"},"modified":"2025-06-24T16:31:01","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T00:31:01","slug":"book-review-beware-the-real-neverland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2025\/06\/25\/book-review-beware-the-real-neverland\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Beware the Real Neverland!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Adventures of Mary Darling<\/em>, by\u00a0Pat Murphy (Tachyon)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft \" src=\"https:\/\/covers.bksh.co\/cover498485-medium.png\" width=\"146\" height=\"226\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>Peter Pan:\u00a0<\/em>We\u2019ve all read the book, seen the play, or watched the animated film, so we know the drill: In Victorian London, three children are swept away to Neverland by PeterPanSpiritOfYouth, where they have many adventures battling pirates led by the dastardly Captain Hook. They leave behind a frantic, ineffectual mother, a bombastic, equally ineffective father, and a drooling dog nanny. Author Pat Murphy asks, Is that really what happened? What if Mary Darling had once been spirited away to be a \u201cMother\u201d to the Lost Boys, despite her insistence that she is\u00a0<em>not<\/em>\u00a0a Mother? What if she understands all too well the deception and peril of the place and its capricious leader?<\/p>\n<p>In Murphy\u2019s retelling, after emerging from the first horrific shock of finding her children missing, with only one place they could have gone, Mary Darling determines to rescue them herself. Under the innocuous facade of a Victorian wife lies a powerful woman who has fought her way free of Neverland with considerable piratical skills. Of course, she encounters opposition, first in her husband, George, who is loving but befuddled by her \u201cindependent ways.\u201d A more significant barrier comes from her uncle, Doctor John Watson, who enlists his friend, Sherlock Holmes, in determining what ails her. Holmes decides that Mary is the prime suspect in the disappearance of her children.<\/p>\n<p>As Mary embarks on her quest to rescue her children before they either starve to death in Neverland or fall prey to Pan\u2019s careless disregard for human life, her past reveals itself in layers. In past and present, we meet old friends and allies, people whose lives have been forever altered by their contact with Neverland. We also discover the reality behind J. M. Barrie\u2019s imperialistic misrepresentation of indigenous peoples, the role and power of women, and the importance of memory.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Adventures of Mary Darling<\/em>\u00a0is a brilliant re-imagining of a familiar tale, laying bare its folly and portraying the ingenuity, skill, and heroism of Mary and a host of other characters, invented and glossed-over. My favorite was James, a sweet gay boy, one of a series of Pan\u2019s \u201cToodles,\u201d and who later as Captain Hook proves to be one of Mary\u2019s staunchest and most able supporters. It should come as neither surprise nor spoiler that Mr. Holmes never appreciates his loss in insisting that logic is the only reality.<\/p>\n<p>Highly recommended.<\/p>\n<p><span data-original-tag=\"O:P\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Adventures of Mary Darling, by\u00a0Pat Murphy (Tachyon) Peter Pan:\u00a0We\u2019ve all read the book, seen the play, or watched the animated film, so we know the drill: In Victorian London, three children are swept away to Neverland by PeterPanSpiritOfYouth, where they have many adventures battling pirates led by the dastardly Captain Hook. They leave behind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,335],"tags":[1079,1077,1078],"class_list":["post-4090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-books-2","tag-neverland","tag-pat-murphy","tag-peter-pan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4091,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions\/4091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}