Peter Pan

Before reviewing Scarlet, the official sequel to Peter Pan, I decided to re-read the original book. I soon realised that 're-read' was the wrong word.

The version of Peter Pan that I read in childhood has been altered so much that it now has little to do with the dark world that JM Barrie created in the full text. In the original, the lost children with no concept of home life fixate their need for a mother on little Wendy, who arouses the sexual jealousy of Tinkerbell the fairy. Peter Pan, a boy with his first set of teeth, which would make him around age eight or nine, wages a bloody war with the pirates whose leader, Captain Hook, turns out to be a former public schoolboy scarred for life by the values learned there. This isn't a tale of enchantment; it is a tale of emotional desolation.

Much has been written about Barrie and his obsessive relationship with the Davis boys, who provided the model for the Peter Pan characters, and there is a subtext to the book that is entirely about Barrie and his ideals of boyhood and family, often put accross in a disconcertingly sly, adult way.

See what your children think of it. I would love to know if they finish reading it.

Tony Hickey's dramatisation in six one-hour episodes of Strumpet City will be repeated on RTÉ Radio 1, beginning Sunday 5 November

Peter Pan by JM Barrie. Illustrated by Elisa Trimby Puffin Classics €7.50, ages 9+