Review: The Girl in Red and Lost Boy
- tatedecaro
- May 27
- 4 min read
5/5 stars
The Girl in Red (2019), and Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook (2017), by Christina Henry
Trigger Warnings (both books): Violence, including graphic murder scenes, Mention of rape, Pandemic, Racism, Psychological abuse, Childhood death
Like Henry's Chronicles of Alice series, these are decidedly not children's books, though I do think they are shelved as YA in some libraries. They're not fairy tales.... or, if they are, they're very specific, dark, wild, bloody worlds that make the Brothers Grimm look like Disney. But if you like a creative re-telling, and don't mind some gloom and gore, these books are impressively original, and Henry's writing is stellar.
Red, real name Cordelia, is a biracial twenty-something woman living at home with her parents and brother. She's also a doomsday prepper. Having watched all the horror and apocalyptic movies she can get her hands on, she knows all the "rules" of surviving a disaster. When signs of a global pandemic, or "The Crisis," begin to show - a highly-contagious virus that begins as a cough, and kills the infected within days - she convinces the family that they need to escape to Grandma's house, instead of being rounded up and placed into a quarantine camp ("for their safety"). Grandma's house is in the woods - isolated and safe, with supplies and enough room for them all. But her mother develops the cough, and some local townies show up and start trouble (having to do with their distaste for the parents' inter-racial marriage), so Red and her brother Adam are the only ones who make it to the relative safety of the woods. Now they just have to survive the 300-mile trek, while avoiding military convoys, and gangs of vigilantes who take anything they can get their hands on, including women.
The narrative alternates between present-day, where Red is on her own, then later with two young children in tow, and the lead-up this moment - what happened to her brother, and what led her to be the current version of herself - resourceful, wary, and, when absolutely necessary, a murderer. Slowly Red discovers that there is more going on than just a contagious cough - but what? Is the infection mutating? Or are they other conspiratorial forces at play here?
Adding to the overall sense of danger, Red is also doing all of this on a prosthetic leg, after having been hit by a car more than 10 years before. She doesn't want sympathy or help. She can do anything that a person with two legs can do... but it does slow her down sometimes.
I was shocked to find that this book was written before COVID-19 (published in June of 2019). It really was rather prescient, even while presenting a world more harshly dystopian than what we all lived through.
This is a fantastic prequel to the story of Peter Pan and Captain Hook, shedding light on how Captain Hook became his tyrannic and vindictive self. And guess what? It turns out Peter is the villain.
Jamie is Peter's first "lost boy," taken from the mean streets of London to Neverland - to be forever young with Peter and the other boys he subsequently brings back. But Jamie is also a care-taker. Where Peter is care-free, and does all things for his own enjoyment, Jamie looks after the boys. He helps heal their wounds after fights with the pirates or with "the Many-Eyed" - a type of beast-monster that live in the nearby plains. He buries the boys who are killed by said pirates or monsters. He comforts the too-young ones, acts as peace-keeper with the too-rambunctious ones, and protects the boys from knowing too much about their hero, Peter Pan. He is also an undefeated fighter, paralleled by no one except, perhaps, Peter himself.
Peter is a spoiled, thoughtless dictator; A little jerk, who gets bored easily, and requires complete devotion from his boys, while paying no mind when they fall to protect him. He says he loves the Lost Boys, but the truth is that as long as Peter is having fun, nothing and no one else matters. And what's fun is war. The whole thing has a very Lord of the Flies vibe.
Slowly, Jamie comes to understand Peter's true nature, particularly when Peter attempts, over and over, to have one of the boys killed because he's too young to partake in the group's murderous adventures. As Jamie learns more about Peter's deceptions, he becomes disillusioned by the island, and starts to - gasp! - grow up... A thing which Peter cannot abide.
It's no spoiler to reveal that Jamie is, in fact, Captain Hook. The story is brutal and gruesome, but it needs to be to illustrate just how a sensitive and caring young boy like Jamie could turn into what we all know as Peter's dastardly nemesis. It's fascinating to watch that transformation happen, and, no exaggeration, reading this book has changed my view of these two iconic characters forever. As far as I'm concerned, the truth of the matter is that we've all been hoodwinked into loving Peter and detesting Captain Hook! Well I say, NO MORE! The truth is out there, and the truth is that we should all be rooting for Hook!
P.S. I did also read Henry's The Mermaid recently, about a mermaid joining P.T. Barnum's museum and show, but I didn't care for it, so decided not to dwell on it enough to write a review. It's a 3, like so many books I read that are just... fine.
UP NEXT: The Antique Hunter's Death on the Red Sea, by C.L. Miller
Comments