There are three books in Alan Moore's Lost Girls series and they all concern the sexual adventures of Alice (from Wonderland), Dorothy (from the Wizard of Oz) and Wendy (from Peter Pan).

In this first book the three girls (now grown up) meet by chance in a hotel and tell their experiences to each other as well as having quite a lot of sex.

What's so great about the book is how the authors have reinterpreted the original fictional works and turned them into sexual stories which show how certain implications could have been hidden. For example, in the original Peter Pan, Wendy and her brothers get a visit from Peter who shows them how to fly with magic dust and happy thoughts. This scene in Lost Girls is reimagined in graphic, sexual detail. It sounds like "filth", and to a certain extend the risqué element is part of the attraction, but actually it's a very clever and literate way of telling an original story.

This first book is mainly about setting up the characters of the three women by telling their first stories (the beginnings of the three books relating to girls) and having short interludes concerning the men in the women's lives now they are grown up, as well as sections about their desire to experiment (with Alice, the oldest and a lesbian). The opening scene is particularly well constructed I thought, where Wendy and her husband are talking and casting shadows on the wall which, while the positions causing the shadows are innocent, are incredibly sexual in their nature. It's subtle implications (about for example in this case people's subconscious desires) that Moore does so well.

Melinda Gebbie's art style gives a dream-like, slightly deformed feeling to the whole affair, which is highly appropriate to the subject matter, particularly in the more graphic sections where it's not just necessary to convey the plain mechanics of the action but to show how the characters themselves are feeling in participating.

If you're an open minded sort with a bit of background on the literature in question (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) then you should enjoy this. If you're the sort of person who flips out at the mere form of an erect penis or is offended by graphic sex scenes involving your beloved childhood story characters, then I advise steering clear - you'll only upset yourself. ( )

apr 2013