Into the Bright Open: A Secret Garden Remix

What could be a more perfect Spring read than The Secret Garden? Frances Hodgeson Burnett's cosy gothic story has been one of my favourites since childhood - helped by a stunning film adaptation and my grandmother's own early life in India making me feel somehow connected to it all.

To this day, the book has a sensory impact on me. I can feel the smooth surface of the letter writing block, hear the whoosh of the skipping rope, shudder at the cries in the night, and feel the turn of what must be the most satisfying key in all of literature. 

Surely, then, I must be outraged at a remix of the story? How dare an author move the action to Canada, and add themes of race, sexuality and gender? 'The wokists have made Mary Lennox GAY, and Dickon a NON-BINARY INDIGINOUS PERSON', you can imagine the Daily Mail screaming (thank god they haven't actually discovered this series). 

Well, of course I'm not outraged. Firstly, I'm not a boomer. Secondly, I was raised on fanfiction - playing around with canonical works is my bread and butter. This remixed classics collection aims to give marginalised writers a voice, and of all the remixed titles, this is the one I was keenest to read. 

But still... when I picked up Into the Bright Open [Cherie Dimaline] I was expecting a fairly by-the-numbers YA. I was not expecting to be moved in a way I can barely describe. 

The story is pretty much in line with the familiar one. Mary (a teenager rather than a child) is orphaned and she is sent to her uncle's house in a remote part of Canada. There she befriends the maid and the maid's younger sister, who spends all her time in the wilderness. She discovers she has a cousin, who is hidden away in the house due to her poor health. Then she stumbles upon a secret garden and blossoms under this new life.

There are plenty of changes here. The 'Dickon' of this story is an indigenous - one who questions gender concepts. Mary is enchanted before they even meet and they fall into a tender first romance together with beautiful ease. Olive, Mary's cousin, is much sweeter than Colin, her counterpart, and her illness is much more mysterious. Their friendship is immediate and one of the driving forces of the book. 

The biggest change is the introduction of a 'wicked stepmother', for Mary's never-present uncle has left the care of his child in his new wife's hands. She is an almost comical example of the genre; snobbish, cruel, racist and ultimately violent - and her control over the house is absolute. Yet she works because Mary, a famously stubborn character, truly has something to fight her for: the protection of her new found family. It was so tense that at one moment I literally wailed 'oh my god!!' out loud. 

If the book has a fault - and I'm not prepared to admit it does - it's that the garden itself is overshadowed by the setting. Mary is older and can travel further into the wilderness in ways the original Mary could not - so the garden isn't quite the escape it might have been. However, the author does use medicinal plants (not that kind) grown in the garden to great effect. 

Weeks after finishing this novel, a sort of softness blooms inside of me whenever I think of it. Ultimately it achieves the aim of this collection by introducing me to a new author. Having looked at their other work, I think I'd have overlooked them previously: now I am absolutely reading more. 

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