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I stumbled into this book because I was following Cherie Dimaline (VenCo), but am glad to have discovered the “Remixed Classics” series from Square Fish, in which “authors from marginalized backgrounds reinterpret classic works through their own cultural lens.” I’m looking into a few of those, including Clash of Steel (Treasure Island), So Many Beginnings (Little Women), and Most Ardently (Pride and Prejudice). I love a daisy chain like this.

Into the Bright Open retells Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, but in 1901 Ontario. Mary Craven is the unpleasant, lonely, spoiled-and-simultaneously-neglected child of a wealthy, important couple in Toronto, raised mostly by a nanny she does not like who does not like her, when her parents are killed in a car crash and she is shipped off to the Georgian Bay to live with an uncle she’s never met. He is not present when she arrives; she is greeted instead by household staff who treat her with more familiarity than she finds appropriate, but she quickly rethinks her stance as she finds them also warm, even friendly. Her uncle’s estate is grand, but by Mary’s standards, wild. Gardens border upon woods, and the ocean is an untamed thing. Native people and “half-breeds” initially offend her snobbish sensibilities, but Mary is just fifteen: young enough, and lonely enough, to change her mind. This version of Mary struck me as more introspective and more capable of self-criticism than I remember the original Mary Lennox to be. It also got me thinking: while readers are certainly accustomed to accepting flawed and imperfect protagonists, Mary Lennox might be an unusually unlikeable one. This Mary Craven, though: she definitely does unlikeable things, but with the benefit of access to her thoughts & feelings (this is told in a close third person), I find her quite sympathetic. She’s learning. She’s growing.

So. At the uncle’s house, Mary of course discovers the expected (if you know the original): the secret garden, and the secret child, a new friend for the friendless orphan girl, hidden away. There is a neighborhood friend as well, here a girl with wondrous comfort, confidence, and skills in the outdoors. There are further parallels to the original novel, but also a sinister twist.

This version, though set at the same point in history, feels more modern in its perspective, and I suspect would feel a bit more accessible to the modern young reader. I’m excited about the “Remix” series, and still excited by Dimaline.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: classics retold, coming of age, LGBTQ, race, remix |