Andrew O'Hagan

Barrie has always been such a crucial writer for me.

When I look back at the novels that I've written and the non-fiction too that I've written, J.M.

Barrie's spirit is always in there somewhere.

Peter Pan is such an incredible modern myth.

It's one of those stories that seems so psychologically true that we all could be stuck in childhood or there could be a boy who never grew up.

It seems so psychologically true that it's like a Greek myth.

You know, it has that quality to it.

You can hardly believe that one man, J.M.

Barry, wrote that story.

It seems almost like a kind of fairy tale of some sort that just exists in every culture.

And so for me, with this book, because there is this question of the glorious youth dying young and just the struggle to accept that in the midst of life you can begin to lose your life, J.M.

Barry's spirit was there for me.

And I found myself...

reading Peter Pan again and again, trying to find the essence of that story.

Because it's really a tragedy when you think about it, that the other children get to grow up while Peter Pan's always stuck at the window.

Yes, he can fly.

Yes, he knows Neverland.

But actually, he's stuck at the nursery window, tapping on the glass, somehow excluded from the reality of life.

The reality of life being that one lives and grows and eventually dies.

That