'...an extraordinary, and an unjustly forgotten, novel.' -- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. The second of J.M. Barrie's two novels about 'the celebrated Tommy', Tommy and Grizel is a richly ambivalent study of the destructive potential of the artistic imagination. Strikingly modern in its psychological and psychosexual concerns, the novel had a profound influence on the young D.H. Lawrence, whose sensibility was drawn to this searching examination of the complex emotions that beset the creator of fictions ...
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'...an extraordinary, and an unjustly forgotten, novel.' -- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. The second of J.M. Barrie's two novels about 'the celebrated Tommy', Tommy and Grizel is a richly ambivalent study of the destructive potential of the artistic imagination. Strikingly modern in its psychological and psychosexual concerns, the novel had a profound influence on the young D.H. Lawrence, whose sensibility was drawn to this searching examination of the complex emotions that beset the creator of fictions. Written at a critical moment in the construction of modern forms of sexual subjectivity, Tommy and Grizel is also a fascinating examination of the ambiguities and uncertainties of male desire. With a new critical introduction by Caroline McCracken-Flesher, which identifies sources, situates the work in Barrie's life and career, and examines the innovative form of the novel, readers can at last encounter this neglected work that ushered in a new era for the modern novel. Caroline McCracken-Flesher is Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. She was educated at Edinburgh Oxford, and Brown universities, and her books include Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow (Oxford, 2005); The Doctor Dissected: A Cultural Autopsy of the Burke and Hare Murders (Oxford, 2012); and the edited volumes Culture, Nation, and the New Scottish Parliament (Bucknell, 2007); Scotland as Science Fiction (Bucknell, 2011); and Approaches to Teaching the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (MLA, 2012).
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While known best for writing Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie wrote other stories in a very different style. Tommy and Grizel is such a book. The story of childhood playmates grown up into an odd pair of lovers, Tommy and Grizel has a flavor of melancholy about it. However, through it all, Barrie tells the tale with such delightful charm and personality that the reader feels as though the book is being read to him by the author.
