Customer Reviews

Neverland: J. M. Barrie, The Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most people's impression of James M. Barrie will be of a kindly gentleman who lived a life ensconced in happy fantasies, an image encouraged by the recent movie "Finding Neverland" and by the theatrical and Disney versions of his most famous play, "Peter Pan." Piers Dudgeon's biography of Barrie and the two families he practically adopted and certainly influenced reveals a darker side.

James M. Barrie was born into a Scottish family which would definitely be described as dysfunctional today. He grew up deprived of love and affection by a mother grieving for a dead son. After moving to London and beginning a successful career as a playwright, he came into contact with the Du Maurier family, whose artistic, literary, and theatrical interests partially concealed a darker focus on hypnosis and mind control. Barrie was particularly interested in the Llewellyn Davis family, whose mother was Sylvia Du Maurier and which was made up of several rambunctious young boys. Barrie more or less adopted the Llewellyn Davis family and raised the boys after their parents' early deaths. This part of the Barrie legend is well known and is usually depicted as pure altruism on Barrie's part. Dudgeon has uncovered some of Barrie's writings and traced the adult lives of the boys to reveal that the author's influence was much more malign than the legend makes out. Barrie also affected the life of Daphne Du Maurier, a cousin of the Davis boys, who similarly suffered from her connections with "Uncle Jim."

Dudgeon has done a great deal of research, contacting friends and relatives of the Davis and Du Maurier families and doing extensive analysis of Barrie's plays and the many novels written by the Du Maurier clan. Of necessity many of his conclusions are reached by supposition and inference,since the Davises and Du Mauriers tended to be understandably reluctant to write or speak too clearly of what had happened with "Uncle Jim." But the evidence of mind control and domination (including emotional and possibly sexual abuse) seems to be clear enough, and we have only to look at the troubled lives of the Davis boys and of their cousin Daphne to recognize that some very stressful things happened to them as children.

Neverland tells a sad story which should be better known, not in order to reduce the pleasure so many of us have found in "Peter Pan", but to help us better understand the complexities and darknesses of the gifted but troubled man who created him and to feel sorrow for some blighted lives.

Having read numerous biographies on J. M. Barre, I was doubtful that this one would give me any new insights into this strange little man, J. M. Barrie. I was wrong. This biography is laced with some interesting and disturbing details which previous authors have chosen to omit. Not a white wash like the Birkin biography, Dudgeon faces his subject head on with honestly and raises some questions. Quite a different image of J. M. Barie.

Warped since childhood following the death of his favoured brother (that he may or may not have been involved in) & rejection by his mother, J.M. Barrie was by all accounts an unusual and lonely hero-worshipper who created a fantasy life for himself and sought the company of children over adults. According to Piers Dudgeon he had a malevolent impact on those he encountered, leaving behind a trail of depression, defeat and death.

Dudgeon seizes upon a poignant phrase by writer DH Lawrence: "J. M Barrie has a fatal touch for those he loves. They die." And this is very much the theme of this book.

Dudgeon holds morally Barrie responsible for the early deaths and/or suicides of four of the five "lost boys" he befriended and informally adopted following the deaths of their parents Sylvia (nee du Maurier) & Arthur Llewellyn Davies; the disastrous second expedition of explorer Robert F Scott to the Antarctic and Daphne du Maurier's breakdowns. His claim is that Barrie used mesmeric techniques to live vicariously through others, dragging them in the process into his shadowy dreamworld. He suggests that Barrie deliberately wrote a play that led actor Gerald du Maurier to commit incest with his daughter, warping both their lives forever more. In fact he finds a malevolent Barrie link with nearly everyone Barrie encountered.

It is hard to believe that anyone could be as black as Dudgeon paints Barrie, but his obsessive research does indicate that Barrie's life was far from the innocent charm of a Disneyfied Peter Pan.

This book was very disturbing to me. I think a lot of people would rather not admit to themselves that this level of depravity and psychosis is possible, let alone something that could occur right in front of their eyes without them knowing about it. Yet that's what happened to the characters of the book at Barrie's cunning hands.

Dudgeon paints a portrait of JM Barrie & a cast of characters influenced by him in the same way cult leaders influence their followers. I am reminded of the definition and characteristics of a sociopath in the Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout: a person who cannot feel, yet may be very clever and manipulative, and can cause a great deal of harm to those around.

Dudgeon researched this book thoroughly and organizes all the pieces of evidence like pieces of a historical puzzle; he fits the evidence together and draws conclusions based on those clues, but he always provides the sources of evidence he's basing his ideas on (many many direct quotations), so the reader is able to evaluate for him/herself the legitimacy of the claims. While much of it may seem outlandish at first sight, I think this is due to the fact that virtually no one is acquainted with or could even imagine the world Dudgeon draws you into, which seems utterly foreign and bizarre. A fair amount of the negativity levelled at this book is because it superficialy seems too ridiculous or heinous to be true, but the alien concepts - like the bohemianism, interest in hypnosis, and the idea that JM Barrie might have been very sinister - are supported by historical record.

I ordered this book I guess on the strength of the first review and was thoroughly disappointed. I should have read the New York Times review first. ([...]) It's one of those books that keeps talking about what it's going to say but has very little to say. It's all rehash and total speculation

This is a riveting book, it never lets you go, and what none of the reviews has mentioned is that at bottom what it is about is child abuse, psychological, emotional abuse, which leads for some to breakdown in adult life. Perpetrated at the very moment that psychology came on the scene as a science, it is a classic. Interesting how divided the reviews are, and how emotional the critical ones.

Reading this book is like driving by a road accident--you want to look away, but you can't. It's fascinating in a spooky way--the author's theses, while frequently based on circumstantial evidence, seems to explain the facts. I think it could have used a slightly heavier editorial hand--it frequently feels repetitive and a little too non-linear, and events which would seem important to the story (such as Barrie's final illness and death) get taken care of in a paragraph. But overall, a good read for those interested in early twentieth century lives and literature.

The copy I read was published in the UK under the title
'Captivated: JM Barrie, the du Mauriers & the Dark Side of Neverland'.

Piers Dudgeon has obviously done his research and clearly has some strong feelings about the kind of influence that JM Barrie had over his 'lost boys' and their cousin Daphne Du Maurier.

I too find the Du Maurier family history fascinating and this book intrigued me. Dudgeon has certainly made some important correlations and offers many insights into why certain events unfolded they way the did for the Llewelyn-Davies and Du Maurier families, many times the reason seems to have been JM Barrie.

This book is not the flattering portrait of a brilliant author, instead Dudgeon paints a dark and frightening picture of a master manipulator who intimidated adults, used children to satisfy his own warped purposes and was fixated on death. The author suggests the reason for Barrie's fascination with death relates to the circumstances surrounding the death of Barrie's brother when he was a child.

If you are a fan of Daphne Du Maurier you will find Dudgeon's analysis of her work very interesting to say the least. Before she died Daphne placed a fifty year moratorium on publication of her adolescent diaries which have been described as 'dangerous, indiscreet and stupid'. What happened in the life of the young Daphne that couldn't be revealed until 2039? We get some ideas from reading Dudgeon's analysis. He has examined the writings of George, Gerald and Daphne Du Maurier and JM Barrie. In addition he includes excerpts from letters and interviews from family members and friends of the Barries, the Llewelyn Davies and the Du Mauriers.

I found it all very, very interesting and I have to say that some of this, no, much of this made my skin crawl. Dudgeon has created a convincing picture of a cunning and ruthless predator who slowly and methodically destroyed Sylvia Llewelyn Davies' marriage and after her death took her children from their family.

I highly recommend this for Du Maurier fans.

I really really wanted to like this book! I am fascinated about truths behind the scenes and inspirations of artists. I was especially intrigued when Alice I Have Been mentioned Peter (Pan's) suicide, then I came across this and thought how cool it would be to get some history.
And I still want that history! I want it so bad! But the trouble is, the style this book is written in is very difficult. At times I am unclear who is talking or whom is being talked about let alone the times I'm trying to figure out where does this person fit in and AAAAGH! When it takes me longer than a few hours to get 1/3 of a way into a book, I have to admit it isn't going to happen. As was the case with this book. It seemed to be VERY slow, and extremely drab as well as the confusion I mention earlier. It took me days to get 40-50 pages read, so I finally, disappointingly cashed it in. Maybe I'll check it out again another time to see if it is just my frame of mind. Hopefully others will find the pleasure I hoped to find in this book.

It's a shame that anyone who hasn't read anything about Barrie before could come away from his book with a completely distorted view on JMB and never go on to discover anything different about either his life or his work. It is full of craps. He has completely misrepresented people and facts in order to back up his own story!!! This man is a crook and a liar.