“Was this, I wondered, what it felt like to be a grown-up? Did you always feel the weight of things on you, your cares pressing you down like a burden you could never shake? No wonder Peter could fly. He had no worries to weight him to the earth.”
It’s a tried and true trope. If a writer isn’t sure what to do for their next novel, why not try a “refreshing twist on an old tale?” We’ve seen it time and again in Hollywood, in comic books and teen lit. We’ve seen the origins and downfalls of classic heroes, the harrowing journeys of their sidekicks, and yes, we’ve seen the villain’s tragic backstory that makes us realize they were forced into villainy.
With more and more of these stories out there, it’s become increasingly difficult to find the hidden gems among the rubble.
When my friend Seth handed me Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry, I was skeptical. To be honest, I set the book down and completely forgot about it for a year.
After experiencing my own harrowing journey and moving across the country to take a sabbatical, I found the book again as I was unpacking. I was bitter and a little jaded, and I’d had a hard year, so I figured why not? I wasn’t in the mood for a fairy tale. Besides, if my critical writing buddy liked it, it was probably pretty great.
Christina Henry gained national acclaim for her Black Wings series, which is about a young agent of death coming into her powers, but she is most well-known for her terrifying twists on classic fairy tales. I haven’t read any of her other works, so I can’t say much about them.
Lost Boy follows Jamie, the favorite and first of Peter Pan’s companions. Jamie has been on the island longer than anyone except for Peter. He doesn’t remember much of his life in the Other Place. When we start, he is already slightly disillusioned with the whole appeal of Neverland. He finds Peter tiresome, and worries for the safety of the boys he considers himself responsible for. As the story goes on, his disillusionment gradually turns to anger and then abject horror as he watches Peter destroy everything and everyone he loves. With each revelation and loss, Jamie grows a little more. By the end of the book, there are no Lost Boys left. Only a grieving young man with a hook for a hand.
The first thing that struck me about Lost Boy was how deeply emotional and empathic the character of Jamie was written. Perhaps I’m biased, because I never liked the character of Peter in the original work, and adored Captain Hook from the moment J.M. Barrie described his “forget-me-not blue” eyes, but I immediately fell in love with Jamie. There was a tenderness and an authenticity to him that made him real. You could see traces of the man he would become, but you could also see the hope of a boy still within him. He was tenacious and fierce, yet kind. His arc over the story is similar to that of an abuse victim–which I believe was the point.
This was a hard book to read. Hard because it was sad. Hard because it was about all the painful parts of growing up–like realizing that people can be terribly cruel. Hard because he never truly escaped his abuser. Despite the fact that he grew up, he was cursed to never leave the island, not as long as Peter lived. And since Peter couldn’t die, that meant he was forever trapped in a Sisyphean cycle of battle with the boy who’d stolen him.
When critics call a new twist on an old tale “refreshing” they’re not usually referring to the dark and gratuitous aspects. I wouldn’t consider Lost Boy refreshing. It didn’t leave me with a feeling of renewed faith in the original material. It left me aching for all that Jamie lost. It was written with the seething, honest passion of someone who has been hurt too much, who has seen too much.
And for that reason, it was magnificent.
K.N. Clem 
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