reviewed by
BONITA CRIDER
It’s summer, early 1980s. Normally, Kevin Murphy’s summer expectations are not much more than hanging out with friends, indulging in a little under-age drinking and going on the occasional date. This summer, he’s hanging on till his fourteenth birthday, and then he’ll tell the girl he really loves how he feels. Except...there are some new older teens in town. They’re bad news, really bad. They’ve threatened Kevin and his friends and have the muscle to back it up. Worse still, Nikki, the girl he longs for may be falling for their leader, Pete Starling. And then one night before he can stop it, Pete takes Nikki away. He flies off with her. He flew. Kevin saw it. If he can convince his friends that it happened, maybe they can get Nikki back. The directions he heard Pete say were "first star on the right, straight on till morning."
The first half of Golden’s novel Straight on Til Morning sets up the characters, Kevin, his friends and his brother, and their relationships. Hints of something not quite right are subtly tossed in: a streetlight breaking in a seemingly impossible way, animals moving around in ways they shouldn’t. Pete Starling and his gang are bigger, older, stronger teens who appear out of nowhere and insinuate themselves with Kevin’s best friend (and secret crush) Nikki. Kevin is dragged along, at least at first, to appease Nikki, not because Pete wants him there.
About midway through the book, the slow rhythm breaks and suddenly Pete’s gang gets released to beat up Kevin while Pete takes Nikki forcibly to Neverland. Neverland is a much harsher place than Disney ever dreamt of. It’s grim realm of a near endless night. Golden references the story of Peter Pan clearly here, but he ties it to legends much older and deeper than James Barry’s original novel: Tuatha de Danann and selkies, among others.
There is reason why certain stories like Peter Pan get retold and reinterpreted from time to time: they’re rich in metaphor that makes them adaptable. Golden is light with the metaphor, preferring to stay with a more basic story. To be honest, it’s a good story that Golden has to tell, and he tells it well if without much flourish. It’s a story with enough potential that I wish the author had spent more time exploring Neverland. As grim as it is, it’s the most imaginative part of the novel, and in the end, it feels like there’s much more to be told about it than the author provides.
Golden has a realistic feel of summers in the suburbs, when you’re too young to work and old enough to be unsupervised. He’s got good sense to let the danger build subtly so that when things change, you still can feel the shock when he lets things break open. He does tell a good story, but it’s one you wish he had taken the time to elaborate more. This being a reprint edition of a 2001 novel, it does have one extra to it: a short story called "Runaway" which tells of an event alluded to in the novel that happened a few years before to the 11-year-old Kevin. Apparently, inexplicable beings have crossed Kevin’s path before. Like Straight on Til Morning, the short story leaves you wishing that the writer expanded his ideas just a little more.
