Secret Garden (Children's Classics)

I come to this book uninfluenced by film adaptations of the story, so my comments here apply only to the actual novel.

Basically a middle-grades book espousing the idea of positive thinking to cure one's ailments. It was a five star book up till the halfway mark and the carefully constructed character of Mary was unceremoniously pushed to the side by the Cravens, and if this were a book for adults I would be pretty harsh about marking it down. Yet, I feel that somewhat different standards ought to be applied to it given its era. That's why it also gets a pass when it comes to the English class system, colonialism, and a mysterious Gothic mansion that ends up being no kind of mystery at all.

As for the plot, I never did quite figure out whether the mother really died in childbirth, as the boy seemed to believe, or whether the accident with a rose tree was actually the case. And the slight hint of intrigue on the part of Dr. Craven's scheme to inherit the mansion was never really paid off.

I listened to the Librivox audiobook version, which had its special charm. This listener's delight in hearing the Yorkshire dialect started to wear thin around the time the story lost its way, but the readers put on a pretty good show nonetheless.