Considering how little I think of the Disney movie, I was surprised to find myself enjoying this book immensely. It's not the story itself that does it for me, but the writing style. I love throwing out that "richly comic" phrase, and this book gives me an excuse to do it again. The story is melodramatic and ridiculous, but it falls into the realm of AWESOMELY ridiculous and melodramatic. The story is filled with WTF moments galore, and a lot of things make no sense. The losing of a shadow which needs to be sewn back on and can't be stuck on with soap is just the tip of the iceberg. The best part about many of these things is that they are mentioned in such a matter-of-fact manner that one assumes the writer believes his observations to be completely commonplace. There is no explanation at all; they're just stated in passing. Here are a few examples.

Mrs. Darling has a kiss on the corner of her mouth which nobody seems able to catch.

Nana, the dog, is a highly efficient nurse who takes her nursing duties seriously. The other nurses (who are people) don't socialize with her, but that doesn't bother her a bit as she's too focused on her duties to participate in their gossip sessions.

The entrances to the Lost Boys' underground home are tailored to fit the boy in question, and if said boy grows or shrinks, he is poked or semi-inflated until he fits his tree again. The tree is not altered.

Sometimes the boys eat make believe food for dinner, but it's every bit as filling as real food.

About the lost boys' bed in which all of them sleep: It was "tilted against the wall by day, and let down at 6:30, when it filled nearly half the room; and all the boys slept in it, except Michael, lying like sardines in a tin. There was a strict rule against turning round until one gave the signal, when all turned at once. Michael should have used it also, but Wendy would have a baby, and he was the littlest, and you know what women are, and the short and long of it is that he was hung up in a basket."

Nothing further is written to explain why babies are hung up in a basket. That passage reminds me that this book is also one of the most non-deliberately offensive books with the terminology it uses. Here's an example about the Indians (now referred to as Native-Americans), a tribe named the Pickaninnies at that, though they aren't black Indians. (Women and white men aren't immune to the stereotyping either):

“The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof that the unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskins fairly is beyond the wit of the white man.
By all the unwritten laws of savage warfare it is always the redskin who attacks, and with wiliness of his race he does it just before the dawn, at which time he knows the courage of the whites to be at its lowest ebb. The white men have in the meantime made a rude stockade on the summit of yonder undulating ground, at the foot of which a stream runs, for it is destruction to be too far from water. There they await the onslaught, the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers and treading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until just before the dawn. Through the long black night the savage scouts wriggle, snake-like, among the grass without stirring a blade. The brushwood closes behind them as silently as sand into which a mole has dived. Not a sound is to be heard, save when they give vent to a wonderful imitation of the lonely call of the coyote. The cry is answered by other braves; and some of them do it even better than the coyotes, who are not very good at it. So the chill hours wear on, and the long suspense is horribly trying to the paleface who has to live through it for the first time; but to the trained hand those ghastly calls and still ghastlier silences are but an intimation of how the night is marching.
That this was the usual procedure was so well-known to Hook that in disregarding it he cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance.”

The way one tells the time in Neverland is to find the crocodile and follow it until the clock inside of him chimes the hour.

Smee, Hook’s favorite lackey, gets a rather unflattering description towards the end of the book: “There was little sound, and none agreeable save the whir of the ship’s sewing machine at which Smee sat, ever industrious and obliging, the essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee. I know not why he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because he was so pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn hastily from looking at him, and more than once on summer evenings he had touched the very fount of Hook’s tears and made it flow. Of this, as of almost everything else, Smee was quite unconscious.”

Well, I reckon you get the idea. Mr. Barrie knew how to turn a phrase in a most attractive manner. I’d call it quite Dickensian, and I’m definitely a fan of that. So there you have it. Read the book, and draw your own conclusion. I love it.

-Pierce