Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix by Cherie Dimaline ISBN: 9781250842664
Published by Feiwel & Friends on September 5, 2023
Genres: Historical Fiction, LGBTQIA, Retelling, Young Adult
Pages: 288
Format: ARC
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In the Remixed Classics series, authors from marginalized backgrounds reinterpret classic works through their own cultural lens to subvert the overwhelming cishet, white, and male canon. This queer YA reimagining of The Secret Garden subverts the cishet and white status quo of the original in a tale of family secrets wonderful and horrifying.
Mary Lennox didn’t think about death until the day it knocked politely on her bedroom door and invited itself in. When a terrible accident leaves her orphaned at fifteen, she is sent to the wilderness of the Georgian Bay to live with an uncle she's never met.At first the impassive, calculating girl believes this new manor will be just like the one she left in Toronto: cold, isolating, and anything but cheerful, where staff is treated as staff and never like family. But as she slowly allows her heart to open like the first blooms of spring, Mary comes to find that this strange place and its strange people—most of whom are Indigenous—may be what she can finally call home.
Then one night Mary discovers Olive, her cousin who has been hidden away in an attic room for years due to a "nervous condition." The girls become fast friends, and Mary wonders why this big-hearted girl is being kept out of sight and fed medicine that only makes her feel sicker. When Olive's domineering stepmother returns to the manor, it soon becomes clear that something sinister is going on.
With the help of a charming, intoxicatingly vivacious Metis girl named Sophie, Mary begins digging further into family secrets both wonderful and horrifying to figure out how to free Olive. And some of the answers may lie within the walls of a hidden, overgrown and long-forgotten garden the girls stumble upon while wandering the wilds...
Characters: 5, I wish I cared more but I just didn’t. Mary arrives self-centered and cynical, and finds purpose weeding a garden and falling in love with a more worldly girl. Every other character is a prop for her journey. Fiona, Rebecca, and Sophie felt slightly less flat than everyone else, but I still found myself not caring.
Atmosphere: 6, it was OK. I generally struggle to imagine settings- I got the bare outline of the abandoned house, the secret garden with its swing, the big house. Feelings-wise, Mary’s default reaction to frightening things was anger, so I didn’t feel tension until very near the end when the first major conflict occurs. Even then, it’s resolved rather quickly and easily, with nobody much worried, so it didn’t exactly keep me sucked in.
Writing: 6, it was OK. No glaring issues that I saw, just less developed than I’d hoped. It’s more of a juvenile YA than expected, which is fine and the writing is appropriate to that. I suppose I hoped for a bit more metaphorical or poetic language, but it’s very plain and verb-focused.
Plot: 7, it’s a retelling of The Secret Garden so there aren’t many surprises. However, the twists of Olive’s treatment, the inclusion of the Metis presence, and the redesign of Dickon all served the story better for a modern audience. The pacing was fast and the story was short, which made it feel more like something to be read aloud.
Intrigue: 5, I had to push myself to read a bit of this every day, but I usually got bored after 1 chapter and wandered off. It’s not poorly executed, it just wasn’t enough of a me thing to keep my attention, so it took me 11 days to read.
Logic: 7, things worked in accordance with the societal norms of the era, the racism and ageism. Plus the characters acted along their motivations (the ones we could discern, anyway). There were no glaring plot holes that I could spot.
Enjoyment: 6, it was OK. I wish I’d been more invested, but I don’t regret reading it.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
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