When Mary Lennox's parents die in India, she is shipped back to England to live on her uncle's estate, Misselthwaite Manor, in Yorkshire.  The place is pretty much run by the dreadful Mrs. Medlock, while Mary's uncle travels compulsively.  Lord Archibald Craven is trying to escape the memories that linger there, of his wife who died in childbirth.

Mary is a sullen brat but she is largely ignored by Mrs. Medlock and so has time to explore  the many nooks and crannies of the manor.  She finds one room that looks just like her mother's did--it is of course her aunt's--and there finds a large key.   It turns out that the key fits the door of a secret garden, which Lady Craven tended and which is now kept locked and allowed to grow wild.  Mary befriends young Dickon, whose sister is a housemaid, and together they explore the garden.

One night Mary determines to find the source of a mysterious crying she's heard in the house, and when she eventually does she discovers her cousin, Colin, who survived his mother but is now sickly, crippled and confined to his room.  He proves an even worse brat than she.  Their mutual stubbornness though proves a boon as she refuses to accept Colin's self-pitying and rejects the idea that he's truly all that ill.  She sets her mind to showing him the garden, convinced that just getting outside will do him good.  Meanwhile, he threatens and commands the staff until they allow him out of the house.  Their visits to the garden will in fact transform all of their lives in ways that will move even the most jaded reader.  No wonder it is such a beloved classic.

It's a marvelous book about the curative powers of love and nature and the will.  It's also a delight to read aloud or listen to in the car thanks to the broad Yorkshire dialect, and the Agnieszka Holland film version is not only beautiful and loyal to the original story, it is also available quite cheap on DVD.

(Reviewed:19-Aug-01)

Grade: (A) Orrin C. Judd

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