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Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrie
Books: Travel: Barrie: Item 2
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Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrieby Lisa Chaney
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: solid bio , June 27, 2006 Reviewer:Harriet Klausner - By providing a deep look at J. M. Barrie, Lisa Chaney also presents a keen glimpse into the creating of Peter Pan in this fine insightful biography. Ms. Chaney provides the childhood background of the renowned author who was the ninth child of Scottish parents during the industrial revolution. He left for London to become a journalist and soon became friends with writers George Meredith and Thomas Hardy even as he began his career (yes he wrote other works besides Pan). In his late thirties Barrie befriends Arthur and Sylvia Davies; he especially enjoyed the times with their offspring as his only marriage ended in divorce and no children. That time spent with the Davies family led to his play Peter Pan in 1904 as he saw his friends as the loving Darlings. When they died he felt alone though his play made him rich and famous yet perhaps as Peter Barrie he never wanted to grow up. Well written and entreating this is a solid bio but feels lacking as a historiographic perspective of critics analyzing the author and his works hinted at with references would have rounded out the insight. Still this is a fascinating look at one of the leaders of the golden age of English writers of children tales; in this case a man who seemingly preferred fantasy so as to never grow up. Harriet Klausner
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The nexus of relationships that inspired James Matthew Barrie's masterpiece, "Peter Pan," would be out of the question in England or the United States today: A responsible parent would not let a grown man play with her young sons for hours at a time, day after day, year after year. But as viewers of the movie "Finding Neverland" know, Barrie did just that with his neighbors the Llewelyn Davies boys, informally adopting them after the death of their father. As a grownup, one of the boys, Nico, insisted that Barrie's love for them was entirely chaste, adding, "I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced what one might call a stirring in the undergrowth for anyone -- man, woman, or child." In Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J.M. Barrie (St. Martin's, $27.95), Lisa Chaney stresses that while Barrie was undoubtedly smitten with the boys in some way, he was also standing apart and studying them as an artist. He had previously struggled to capture what Chaney calls "the mystery of growing up" in such plays as "Sentimental Tommy," and now -- with the brothers serving as a kind of living laboratory -- he was ready to perfect his "anatomy of childhood." The result was the play "Peter Pan," which became not only a classic but a proving ground for some of the greatest actors of the 2oth century. Among those who have played Peter have been Mary Martin, Jean Arthur, Margaret Lockwood, Glynis Johns, Mia Farrow and Dorothy Tutin; Capt. Hook has been played by Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Alistair Sim, Cyril Ritchard and Dustin Hoffman. Barrie expressed the impulse that lay behind his children's plays and novels in a passage that shows what a self-conscious artist he was: "I wish that the universe were radically different, since the world as it is is not just tragic, it is for me an impossibility. To be completely human -- with its full range of both practical and imaginative potentialities -- and to grow up; these are in a sense contradictories. By growing up, by co-operating in social order, living, one
has to curtail the imagination; by doing this one is obliged to give up so much that one becomes an unacceptably diminished person."
The Life of J.M. Barrie
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
From Booklist
Obsessed with time and mortality, James Barrie created in Peter Pan a myth with enduring, worldwide appeal. Chaney thoughtfully examines Barrie's inner life from childhood in Kirriemuir, Scotland, to wild, international success. She describes young James as unexceptional, small for his age, but "cheerful enough," though not much was expected of him. When beloved elder brother David died accidentally, James perfected David's mannerisms and wore his clothes to assuage his grieving mother--unsuccessfully. Even that early, he was a natural storyteller who needed to perform and make himself visible. But when he announced he wanted to be a writer, his parents were flabbergasted. Later, after Barrie moved to London and achieved fame and fortune, Kirriemuir represented for him all that was good and wholesome, and he returned to it again and again. Chaney discusses Barrie's work (many successful novels and plays), ill-fated marriage, complex mother-son relationship, friendship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and her sons, and the origins and evolution of his masterpiece so as to bring to life a most complicated, enigmatic, and melancholy man. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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