Tom's experience of the garden lasts for just a few weeks but Hatty grows in that space of time from an unloved orphan at the mercy of her aunt and cousins to a confident young woman on the brink of marriage. The questions about the nature of time and reality are dealt with in a way which a child will understand and there's even a conclusion that allows you to believe that the midnight garden and other places are being projected from the mind of a third party.
It takes Tom a little while to work out that Hatty is a Victorian whilst he is living in the middle of the twentieth century and for a while he wonders if Hatty is a ghost – at one point he even considers whether or not he himself is a ghost. They're not chronologically in sequence either. On each visit Hatty is a different age and whilst Tom is going to the garden every night the gaps for Hatty are often months or even years. The story of Tom's illicit visits to the garden and his relationship with Hatty builds gradually. Better still he discovers another lonely child, a young girl called Hatty, and together they play and explore the garden.įor the twenty-first century child grown used to Alex Ryder and Young Bond this book will seem tame but there are reasons why it has been in print continuously for fifty years. That night he ventures downstairs again and the garden has returned. But when he takes this up with his relatives the next day he sees the cramped back yard which has taken the garden's place. His aunt and uncle had told him that there was no garden but when he opens the back door he walks into a large, sunlit garden, with lawns and trees.
It's an unnerving thirteen which persuades Tom to go down to the communal hall and investigate.
As Tom is in quarantine he can't go out to play with other children and lacking exercise he finds it difficult to sleep at night: counting the number of times that the grandfather clock strikes becomes a habit. When Peter Long had measles his brother Tom went to stay with his childless aunt and uncle in a flat with no garden and a landlady of uncertain temperament. Summary: Re-issued to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the original publication this book is rightly regarded as one of the best books in children's literature.
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