Mary Lennox is a surly, spoilt and isolated child growing up in colonial India, where her upbringing has been delegated to the subservient brown ayahs. When her entire household perishes in a Cholera epidemic, she is sent to live with a distant uncle in a large mansion in the Yorkshire moors. The uncle is largely absent, and the minimal staff at the mansion, with their broad Yorkshire accents, are not as fawning as the brown-skinned help she is used to.
To kill boredom, she explores the vast gardens of the mansion, and discovers a walled off “secret” garden. When a little bit of luck and help from a robin, she finds the key to the garden, and sets about restoring the hidden place to its original glory. She ropes in her maid’s brother Dickon into the scheme, as well as her isolated and seemingly handicapped cousin. The effort they put in to bringing the secret garden back to life also has a positive effect on their own manner, and health.
This book was a product of its times, but even in that context, it is vastly problematic. Brown people are depicted as somewhat less than fully human. A handicapped child miraculously is cured, with nothing more than will-power; all it takes to cure any ailment is to chant “magic magic magic”.
While this is meant to be a children’s fable, rather than serious literature, the overwhelming praise this book gets is unwarranted. The pacing is slow and the language used is tedious. The author puts in a fair amount of effort to describe the broad Yorkshire accent, but those parts are much harder to understand because of the colloquialisms, which are actually presented as quaint. The character development is strong, but there are no real conflicts or hurdles to be overcome, so the character growth experienced by the key protagonists doesn’t seem very plausible.
Overall, a tedious and dated read.