Review: Wildly funny fractured fairytale.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 8, 2011
I first came across Barbara Silkstone and her Fractured Fairytales a couple of years ago on Authonomy, when I was amused and impressed by the excerpt from her first book, The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters, which I read there. The title not only draws on Lewis Carroll's classic Alice, but also links the book to the very funny Adrian Mole, Aged 13 and Three-Quarters which I read with joyful laughter when the series first came out, years ago.Alice in Wonderland was probably one of the first real books I read, as opposed to picture books. (My little sister was awarded it as a Sunday School prize when she was a bit young to be able to read it, so I seized on it, read it from cover to cover, and still have very happy associations with it.) So Barbara's book - what should I call it? A take off? A pastiche? Or perhaps a tribute? -  delighted me.  Her funny, feisty heroine Alice, reminiscent of Janet Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum, was a real find, and the thriller plot was gripping and page turning.And now, here comes another equally attractive thriller with a connection to a much loved children's book, Wendy and the Lost Boys.  Confession time - I've never actually read Peter Pan. (And why on earth not, you may well ask? I don't really know!)  But I first saw the Walt Disney cartoon at quite a young age and was enthralled by it. I've since watched it with my children and found myself still loving it. So Barbara's new book held an immediate strong appeal for me.Wendy Darlin, like Barbara Silkstone's earlier heroine Alice Harte, is funny, feisty, and Stephanie Plum-like, but, unlike most of the very funny minor characters, she is a realistically drawn individual whom we connect to straightaway and for whom we find ourselves rooting throughout the book.  Wendy is soft-hearted. She allows herself to be sucked into trouble with the terrible (but very amusing) villain Charlie Hook, captain of the Predator, a pirate ship in modern terms, purely because she can't turn down the appeals for help from Marni. Wendy doesn't even like Marni much, but she is the daughter of an old friend, and Wendy feels that she has to step in, and onto Hook's yacht.  So here she goes, plunging into a set of events which are hair raising, exciting, and laugh out loud funny; and meeting up with a set of characters whose idiosyncrasies make them by turns appealing, revolting, funny and terrifying.Beginning with her husband Croc (Hook's enemy - representing the crocodile in the original) and Roger Jolley (attractive apart from his brown wingtip shoes, but introducing himself as one of the dreaded SEC people) Wendy collects a number of strange and fascinating people around her. The weird array made up of Joseph, Mary, Annie, and Granddaddy Earl has to be read to be believed - if then! We are in a fantasy world, with people - at least the minor characters - who, like those of Alice in Wonderland, are caricatures, but still in some sense real and easy to relate to. But at the end of the day, it's Wendy herself who sorts things out, solves the mysteries, and defeats the villain, while solving her own past hang-ups at the same time.Barbara Silkstone has a real knack of not only naming her characters, but also of creating their idiosyncrasies, to fit in with her original. Wendy's long lost boyfriend, Peter Payne, for instance, left her because he didn't want to grow up and face the real world. But Silkstone shows us the dangerous side of this attitude, not just its attraction, unlike Barrie. And the secret of The Lost Boys, and whom they turn out to be, is both original and convincing.If you like your thrillers to be fast moving, full of action, and with a surprise ending, this is for you. If you like your heroines warm hearted, brave, with a desire for justice but with occasional foolhardiness, this is for you. If you like a writer to be witty, skilful with words, and able to throw in the odd touch of enchantment in her descriptive passages, this is for you.  (Mind you, you need to be happy with a fair bit of humour of the type not suitable for the original audience of Peter Pan or Alice, such as the recurring joke about Hook's UpUGo, which I won't spoil for you.)  And if you like an ongoing touch of romance for your heroine, with various candidates for her affections, and a bit of a mystery as to whom she'll end up with, resolved beautifully at the end, this also is for you.Sound like your type of book?  Wendy and the Lost Boys is definitely mine!