Penguin South East Asia introduces an array of page-turners this November. No Room in Neverland, by Joyce Chua, is one of them. It is an addictive and intriguing piece of writing that swings between fact and fiction. Read the back cover, the author’s bio and the excerpt we have published with the permission of Penguin Random House South East Asia. 

BACK COVER: How far would you go to visit that place in your head? All Gemma Young remembers of her childhood are her regular visits to the idyllic, imaginary Neverland before her mother fell sick. When Gemma meets Cole, a disenchanted boy who stirs up more than just memories of her adventures in Neverland, she begins to piece together her half forgotten childhood: her mother sick with longing for Neverland, the accident that ripped her family apart, and her father who abandoned her when she was a child. But now, Gemma’ s near-obsessive quest to find her father sends her spiralling deeper into Neverland just like her mother had. As the boundaries blur between the real world and Neverland, Gemma must sift through fact and fiction, discern between truth and make-believe, to find out what happened to her mother and rebuild a new life with her father.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joyce Chua is the author of Lambs for Dinner (Straits Times Press, 2013), Land of Sand and Song, Kingdom of Blood and Gold, and Until Morning (Penguin Random House SEA). She graduated from the National University of Singapore with a degree in English, and is now a personal finance editor by day and author by night. When not writing, she can be found on Instagram and TikTok at joycechuawrites sharing her random poetry or fangirling over Asian dramas.

EXCERPT:

From the night Gemma’s mother introduced her to Peter Pan, the story of the boy who wouldn’t grow up trailed through the house like a vine reaching for the sun.

It was everywhere Gemma went—twisted in the threads of the sofa, caught between the lines of laundry in the backyard, creeping under the doors into the rooms—and every shadowy nook of the house was dusted with the magic of Neverland. Gemma and her mother, who spent her days caring for her daughter and giving art classes, would sit on the swing in the backyard, chasing clouds, and her mother would describe a figure cutting through the dappled sky and holding out a hand to whisk them away.

‘Someday, Gemma,’ her mother said one day. ‘We’ll go to Neverland with Peter. Would you like that?’ Gemma nodded eagerly as her mother scooped her up and buried her face in Gemma’s hair, squeezing her a little too tightly for comfort.

In the afternoons, her mother would go to the nursery to draw. From her playpen, Gemma would watch her mother’s frenzied hand move across the canvas to create portraits of a bright-eyed boy with a smile that let you in on a secret, or smudged drawings of a lush dreamscape populated by sunbathing mermaids and wild boys with painted faces.

Peter arrived on one of those lazy afternoons, after they had had their fill of playing with the Lost Boys in the backyard and retired to the nursery. Inside, the air churned hot and sticky in the prelude to a storm.

Her mother’s movements were feverish, almost hypnotizing to Gemma. There was only the sound of pencil scratching against paper as clouds gathered outside, closing in with increasing urgency. Inside her playpen, Gemma launched into a jiggly dance along with the chime of the dreamcatcher hung by the window. Something was brewing—the air had transformed from static to electric.

When the first crack of thunder shattered the taut silence, her mother dropped her pencil. It clattered to the ground and rolled under the cupboard where she kept the brushes and rolls of canvas. Her head whipped towards the window. In a flash, she was perched on the windowsill, her eyes peeled as she scanned the sky.

‘There you are,’ she breathed.

Gemma saw no one, but she knew it was Peter who had come to visit at last. She craned her neck and leaned out of her playpen, but all she saw was the tower of dark grey clouds advancing towards them.

A surge of panic took hold of Gemma when another clap of thunder rattled the windowpanes. They were in the belly of the beast, and Peter was nowhere to be seen. She watched her mother raise a shaky leg to climb up the windowsill and let out a plaintive wail that was equal parts desperation and fear.

Her mother stopped. ‘Oh, of course, baby,’ she murmured, doubling back for her. ‘How could I forget you?’

Gemma held out her eager arms, ready to be taken away.

But no, something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Her mother’s grip around her was too keen. And they were going right into the eye of the storm, towards the sky that belched steel-grey clouds occasionally split by brilliant flashes of light.

‘Mummy,’ Gemma squeaked. ‘Inside. Inside.’

Her mother’s eyes were glazed, and a faint smile played at the corners of her lips. Gemma could tell that her mother was far, far away despite her firm grip. ‘But Peter’s here. Don’t you want to meet him?’

‘Inside,’ was Gemma’s only reply as she reached for the safety of her playpen.

‘Peter’s waiting for us, Gemma. Let’s go!’ She mounted the windowsill again. The first drop of rain hit Gemma’s cheek, and she could barely open her eyes from the wind gusting in. ‘We’ll fly to Neverland. You like flying, don’t you, baby?’

Gemma liked flying, but only when her father spun her around in the room or pushed her on the playground swing. Falling seemed awfully possible with this sort of flying. The ground was lying in wait for them. Worse, what if they were sucked into the grey belly of clouds and never found ground again?

Over the roar of thunder, the sound of the front door almost went unheard. ‘Katie, I’m home! Katie? Gemma?’

‘Daddy!’ Gemma cried, straining towards the nursery door.

Maybe he heard something in her voice, or he had expected something like this to happen. His footsteps pounded up the stairs as he yelled, ‘Katie! Gemma!’ By the time her father appeared at the door, Gemma had started to squirm and wail. ‘Katie. Come down, sweetheart. What will the neighbours think?’

Indeed, they must have been a sight for the neighbours, a woman with a distressed baby in her arms perched on the narrow windowsill.

‘I don’t care about the neighbours,’ her mother snapped, unrelenting in her grip around Gemma. ‘What do they matter now that I’m leaving for Neverland?’

‘Katie.’ It seemed to cost her father everything in him to keep his voice steady and low and as gentle as possible. ‘Come back down. Come to me.’ When that didn’t work, he said, ‘You’re upsetting Gemma.’

Her mother turned to the sky, one hand braced against the window frame and the other holding a writhing Gemma. In that split moment of hesitation, her father dashed across the room and reached for her. He wrapped an arm around her whittled waist and another around Gemma, pressing the little one close to him.

As the three of them went crashing back to safe ground, her mother wrenched Gemma back, and the girl’s forehead scraped against the edge of the wooden cupboard by the window. Gemma’s cry rose in a sharp crescendo. The room spun, and Gemma saw colours burst around the corners of her eyes.

It would take eight stitches to seal the gash over the outer corner of her left eyebrow.

From then on, her mother would sometimes stare at the tiny, white crescent-shaped scar on Gemma’s eyebrow with her lips pursed and her eyes red and wet. They would not speak of that incident again, although Gemma would catch her father on the phone with Doctor York more often, intent as he paced the length of his study. Her mother would stay in her studio more to paint, and Gemma would learn to colour and doodle. But really, she preferred to think of it as keeping watch over her mother.

Gemma’s resolve hardened from that day on. She would make it into Neverland, if only to really be with her mother, so she would never again be left behind like she had that day in the nursery.

Meanwhile, Peter’s shadow remained in the house, a silent companion lying in wait for the day Gemma found her way to Neverland. 

AMAZON LINK: https://www.amazon.com/No-Room-Neverland-Joyce-Chua/dp/9815127780/ref=sr_1_1