Geraldine McCaughrean – Page 3 – Tales of the Marvelous

As a general rule, I’m against sequels to classic novels written by new authors, especially when the primary appeal of the original was the author’s voice. How do you ever do that right? I’ve only see it happen once. Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean is a beautiful sequel to Peter Pan.

I give a lot of the credit to her–and a lot of the credit to the way the sequel came to be. That’s a fascinating story too. In 1929, J. M. Barrie gave the rights to Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, meaning that they receive all the royalty money, as well as controlling the rights. Several years ago they held a contest inviting authors to submit a sample chapter and synopsis for a sequel. All of this means that the people involved in the publishing had a primary interest, not in a later version, but in the original work–and you can tell.

I can’t say that Peter Pan in Scarlet feels like J. M. Barrie is telling the story, but I feel like the story is very much about the world and the characters that he created. McCaughrean has done a very impressive job at staying true to the story J. M. Barrie gave us, and yet giving us another story that is, I think, what we all want.

Mr. Barrie was in some ways not kind to anyone who wanted to follow him with a sequel. He left a lot of challenges behind him. To name the chief ones–he killed off his villain, he grew up his supporting characters, and his heroine was rather annoyingly maternal all along. So what is a sequel-writer, saddled with Wendy and knowing that readers really want to see Peter Pan and the (grown-up) Lost Boys fight (the deceased) Captain Hook, to do?

McCaughrean handles it all neatly and effectively, and with the kind of magical and whimsical solutions that are worthy of Mr. Barrie. I don’t want to give it all away…but I can’t resist just a little. Suppose a person wants to get back to Neverland but you can’t depend on Peter to show up at your window, how do you go about it? Well, you’ve got to find a fairy for their dust, right? And the best place to look…Kensington Gardens, of course. And the way to find a fairy is to find a baby out with its nurse, and to catch the baby’s first laugh just as it turns into a fairy. Brilliant, magical and whimsical.

Peter Pan in Scarlet opens with Wendy and the Lost Boys as grown-ups, but they’ve begun to dream about Neverland again. They decide that something must be wrong, that perhaps Peter is in trouble. They have to find a way to become children again so that they can return to Neverland and help him–and from there the adventures begin. In Neverland they find that summer has turned into autumn, and something seems to be inexplicably wrong.

McCaughrean even handles Wendy well, successfully portraying her as simply a rather practical-minded child (after the grown-ups become children again), rather than a child who wasted all her time in Neverland darning socks.

After we return to Neverland and find everyone’s favorite Wonderful Boy, the adventures are “nicely crammed together,” and we have the chance to explore the greater geography of the magic lands. Everyone’s favorite pirate captain appears too. Again McCaughrean finds a way to stay true to the end of Mr. Barrie’s book, where the Crocodile eats Hook, and yet still bring the villain back.

Even if there was nothing else in this book to recommend it–which is obviously not the case!–there is a single line in here which would alone put it miles above Peter and the Starcatchers in my estimation. At one point in the book, Wendy tells Peter and the Lost Boys a fairy story about a little white bird in the Kensington Gardens. We don’t hear the story; we don’t even know what the story is supposed to be about. But that doesn’t matter. McCaughrean knew that a little white bird in Kensington Gardens is significant in Peter Pan lore.

Thank you, Geraldine McCaughrean, for knowing what you’re writing about, and for writing it so well.

Author’s site: http://www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk/

“I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now—which is ridiculous, since he’s been dead for ninety years. But look at it this way. In ninety years, I’ll be dead, too, and the age difference won’t matter.”

This is one of my all-time favorite opening lines of a book (right up there with “All children, except one, grow up”). I read this in a bookstore and knew immediately that I had to read The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean.

The story of fourteen year old Symone’s trip to Antarctica, and how everything goes horribly wrong, is an exciting adventure in its own right. But what I really love about this book is the relationship between Sym and Titus.

Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates (at right, though he smiles more in the book) was an Antarctic explorer who went to the South Pole with Robert Falcon Scott. As Sym notes, Titus has been dead for over ninety years—he died in Antarctica in 1910, with Scott and the rest of their party. But he lives on in the present day in Sym’s head. It’s not a fantasy—he’s not a ghost—it isn’t a time travel story—she’s not insane. Titus is Sym’s imaginary friend. And who wouldn’t want to be with “the fortunate Captain Oates,” as Titus describes himself in Chapter Twenty-one. He’s charming and witty and chivalrous, the kind of friend any girl would want.

Or as Sym puts it, “He is everything, everything, everything I ever admired and wanted and couldn’t have. He is everything I needed and couldn’t find in real life.” And so he is her friend and confidante and loyal supporter through, first, the Hell of not fitting in at high school, and later, the Hell of the ice plains of Antarctica.

It’s hard to explain how and why a story about a teenage girl and her imaginary friend works—but it does, beautifully. I’ve read other books featuring imaginary friends, and no one handles it as masterfully as Geraldine McCaughrean.

I also have to give a nod to the audiobook. Ruth Sillers narrates most of the book as Sym, but Richard Morant narrates all of Titus’ dialogue. I listened to a brief excerpt when I first found out about this. Similar to reading that first line of the novel, I heard Morant deliver seven words and promptly handed over $25 on iTunes to buy the audio—and I don’t usually spend money easily or impulsively. But believe me, his voice is worth following to Antarctica. 🙂

There’s a back story to Morant as narrator that I love. Within the book, Sym describes watching The Last Place on Earth, a miniseries about the expedition, which is pivotal to inspiring her image of Titus. And in The Last Place on Earth, Titus is portrayed by—Richard Morant.

I didn’t know much of anything about Antarctica or Antarctic explorers (sorry, Titus) before reading The White Darkness. McCaughrean provides a helpful background on Oates and Scott, so if that’s you too, you won’t have a problem following the story. And, like me, by the end you’ll find Antarctica much more interesting than you ever dreamed. And while it still may not be high on your list of places to visit—it isn’t for me!—Antarctica will conjure up a magic it never had.

Author’s site: http://www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk/

And you can see the cover from my copy up there in the heading, towards the left.