There are books read in childhood that, over time, are elevated to mythic status, as memory seeks to preserve that embodied sensation of the newly discovered miracle of reading which grants agile, hungry imaginations a licence to fly. One such book is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I don’t know exactly how old I was when I read it, but I was a precocious reader and I haven’t read it since. For fear of breaking the spell?
The Secret Garden Rewilded, as a retelling intended for young readers, extends a welcome invitation to the adult to revisit the story, not in search of a juvenile paradise lost, but with hope of a mature one yet to come. As a contemporary take on a cherished classic it may lack the chiaroscuro of Hodgson Burnett’s writing, but I enjoy that. It doesn’t try to compete stylistically. Instead, it leaves space for the original text to meander through the corridors of the new. You could say it is less a retelling of, than a dialogue with, the original. And although it is happy to listen with respect, it has ideas of its own! Thankfully, it manages its eco-conscious intentions with discretion. No greenwash gardening here! Because the Rewilded version unearths and deploys a deeper truth than the Romantic ‘healing power of nature’ motif of its muse. Its poetic pragmatism is more appropriate for our times, calling to mind the wisdom of the great Ernest F Schumacher:
“The all-pervading disease of the modern world is the total imbalance between city and countryside […] the health of the cities depends on the health of the rural areas. […] To restore a proper balance between city and rural life is perhaps the greatest task in front of modern man.”
With the benefit of an inter-textual reading, the story’s relocation from a turn of the century industrial north landscape to one in the rural south west is a clever decision. In one sweep of the pen across the map, the industrialisation and colonialism in which the former was bound up, is implicated in the globalisation at the heart of the plight of rural communities endemic in the south west and elsewhere today. But the decision is not just a political one. The author of Rewilded knows her landscape well, knows it, understands it, cares about it and brings to life her small corner of rural Devon and its community with insight, humour, intimacy and love, so that we end by wishing it to thrive. Balance restored.
The Secret Garden Rewilded is published by Andersen Press and available from all good bookstores.