Liz Michalski’s DARLING GIRL

If someone gave you a potpourri of names: Wendy, Michael and John Darling; Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Captain Hook—would that grouping light up your memories as it did mine?

Ah childhood, the dream of flight, open windows, night skies…maybe even the Lost Boys, Tiger Lily, Captain Hook. Such names might have you searching for a book, or at the very least doing an internet search…because no matter your age or background, at some point in your life, you became aware of the story of Peter Pan. It was read to you, or you watched the Disney cartoon version. There was also a musical, written by Leonard Bernstein, first performed on the Broadway stage, Mary Martin playing the role of Peter Pan, the same to be broadcast on American television.

Because yes! America and Americans fell in love with Peter Pan, the original tale written by James Mathew Barrie, who later was knighted, becoming Sir James, a writer whose own life experience reappeared in his stories. One of ten children, Barrie finished his education at Edinburgh University, and in 1887 moved to London to write novels. Much has been written about his colorful life, his relationships to his siblings. And though the product of humble origins, Barrie greatly prospered through his writing, so that when he died in 1937, he was well-known for his novels and plays.

But if these few references fail to light up memories of the book, the play, or Disney’s cartoon of PETER PAN, author Liz Michalski’s lovely novel, DARLING GIRL, will create new ones, her novel taking you places you won’t want to leave, she weaving a storyline that brings the myth of Peter Pan into the present. And yes, her version is a wild, wonderful fusion of fantasy, bliss and modern struggle.

Telling the story in present time, allows Michalski to peel away sweetness, reveal a family with jealousies, financial problems, and secrets. In her modernized version, an initial car crash has caused physical harm to Holly and her two children. Readers of the original story discover that Holly is the daughter of Jane, the last Darling child to step onto the window ledge and let Peter Pan fly her away to Wonderland. “Jane, oh Jane,” Peter calls. But Jane returned to London, married and gave birth to Holly, who now has two children, Eden and Jack. Eden has a rare blood condition which instead of keeping her young like her father Peter Pan, is causing her to age. Will Jack also succumb? Back in London, again living with her mother, Holly is lead on a search to not only find Eden, who has gone missing, but to discover how to keep Jack healthy, and deal with the secretive life of her mother, who is still young and beautiful.

Is there a villain in this story? Of course, but Michalski loves surprises. Think you know the original tale? She knows it better than anyone. I can picture Michalski doing her research, ideas blooming as she takes hold of the story, molds it into something new and often dangerous. There are family members with hidden lives that would never align with perfection. There are villains who in Michalski’s version have become heroes. So what would Sir James Mathew Barrie think? He’d be honored, Michalski taking the iconic elements of the story…Neverland, Peter Pan appearing at the nursery window to pick the next child to fly away with him…Captain Hook, who might soften after the loss of his one hand…and of course THE DARLING FAMILY, still in their London home of comfort, tradition, attempting to adjust to frightening life events that in some ways are tempered by cell phones, plane flights and yet… How do you compete, when there is still magic in the air? Michalski shows you how…the very last words of this novel providing the answer and the best way to end my review…as one of the major characters…

closes her eyes.  And leaps.

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