The Other Side of Never edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane

(Titan Books, 2023)

Reviewed by Ksenia Shcherbino

A good story is always like an onion—it opens new layers of meaning each time you approach it. Even more so, if the book in question is Peter Pan—less than a book and more a mythology, a way of seeing the world, an identity. The protean nature of the original has its impact on its literary progeny: The Other Side of Never is a collection of short stories engaging with Peter Pan, spin-offs and palimpsests, sidequels and crossovers, re-tellings and re-imaginings, and its variety is both its strength and its weakness. I found the stories uneven in their depth, but isn’t it the essence of Peter Pan the book: as Kirsten Stirling mentions in her Peter Pan’s Shadows in the Literary Imagination (2012), the book is full of shadow-play and make belief, with various seekers searching their own truths: Peter Pan, his shadow, Wendy and Captain Hook (both with their own agenda), Wendy’s parents, their children, the crocodile, Captain Hook, the readers (and, as The Other Side of Never shows, the writers with various degrees of fascination, approval and dismissal), their own version of the boy who wouldn’t grow up.

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Review from BSFA Review 22 - Download your copy here.