Reread Reviews -- Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden

So I have actually been reading new books too, but I am currently in the middle of a few long ones (deliberately; I love it when I know it will be awhile before I finish) so I have very little to write about in the way of books I've just read for the first time. (Although I'm looking forward to finishing Maia, just so I can harsh on Richard Adams' sexist nonsense in public.)

But I did just reread a couple, and I can have thoughts about them, can't I?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

You know, I liked A Little Princess better when I was a kid, and I thought maybe now I'm older the gap would have closed. But, no, I was right the first time: Little Princess is a better book. For one thing, Sara is a more compelling character than Mary. But much more than that -- a hell of a lot more happens in A Little Princess. I don't just mean the whole being rich, being poor, being rich again thing, I mean that Sara's days are just more full and involve more things than Mary's do. The whole point of The Secret Garden is that there is absolutely nothing for Mary to do all day except to dig around in the dirt looking for keys and bulbs and whatnot, and as a kid it was reasonably compelling, but I'm sitting here as an adult, and the whole thing just sounds intensely dull. When I have nothing to do except dig around in the dirt I either find a book or kill myself. I realize that the point of the book is that Mary's mind and body and spirit and all are healed from her communion with nature, and it's touching, but it's not nearly as interesting as I thought it was when I was a child.

And you know I'm not a kid anymore because instead of charming and mysterious I found Dickon a little smug. And Colin! God, don't get me started. I'd totally forgotten how much Burnett likes to talk about Magic without actually crossing the line and writing, you know, a fantasy book, and in Little Princess it more or less works, because it's a person doing things that appear magical to other people, and it's kind of fun, you can see it from both sides. But the whole Magic of Nature thing doesn't have the human interest element, and I'm very sorry, but Colin's smug little speeches are the height of annoyance. I ended up skimming through all that stuff. There's no humor in the story, and Mary doesn't have Sara's drive and therefore it's much harder to identify with her. The best scenes are when Mary and Colin are both screaming their fool heads off at each other.

As a whole, really disappointing. I have clearer memories of the movie than of the book, and that is really sad.