Already a highly successful writer, in 1897, while walking in London's Kensington Gardens, Barrie befriended the young Llewelyn Davies boys (five-year-old George, and his younger brothers Jack and Peter later came Michael and "Nico"). There's a sense that back then people were uninhibited by knowledge of inhibition. In watching or reading about Barrie's life, one discovers improbable strangeness. There was little he did not know about the guilt of authorship. Barrie presents a portrait of the Author as such, a paper man whose life passes between the event and the notebook that records it. His quirk is the knowing zest with which he exploited his past in books. It can be no surprise that this upbringing scarred him. But David would always win, destined as he was to remain forever 12 years old, while Barrie was condemned to grow up. Young Barrie did his best to claim her distracted attention, calling her back by amusing her and consciously impersonating his dead brother. His mother took to her bed, too depressed to engage with her remaining children. When he was seven, his older brother David died in a skating accident. The story begins in James Matthew Barrie's childhood in Kirriemuir.
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