Customer Reviews

Tom's Midnight Garden (Archway)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Do you remember those old textbooks they used to hand out in fourth grade English class back in the 1980s? How they'd contain a section or a snippet out of some of the great works of children's fiction in the hopes of whetting our elementary appetites and interests so that we'd seek out the books on our own? No? Well, I do. I remember reading one of these textbooks one day and coming across a section in which a boy lives in a house where the clock strikes thirteen one night. Then he stumbles onto a magnificent eerie garden that only appears at this time. For years I carried the images from this single slight little passage with me, not knowing where they came from. It was only when I became a children's librarian that I decided to rediscover my mystery book. It didn't take long either. "Tom's Midnight Garden" is a true literary classic. Combining a British love of gardens with a bit of ghostly hauntings, time travel, and magical hours that don't exist in the regular world, the book has remained a classic, even if it has slipped out of the public eye a jot.

Tom and Peter are uncommonly close brothers. For them, summer is the time when they can play endless games in their backyard for hours at a time. Imagine Tom's sorrow then when Peter comes down with the measles right at the beginning of the warm months AND Tom has been quarantined to his stuffy old aunt and uncle's home. The boy is, needless to say, less than delighted with this chain of events. His relatives occupy the second floor flat in an old building that is separated into apartments. To top it all off, Tom has insomnia every night and finds himself wandering the building. One night the grandfather clock on the first floor starts chiming an unheard of thirteen chimes. Drawn by this peculiar number, Tom goes to the first floor, opens the back door, and finds himself facing a beautiful gigantic garden and woodsy area. This is especially odd when you consider that during the day this place is a paved over alleyway replete with garbage cans and a high fence. At night, however, it transforms into a magnificent wonderland for Tom and the girl he meets there, Hatty. Hatty and Tom become inseparable, in spite of their mutual confusion over what exactly is going on. Only when Tom is threatened with having to leave his aunt and uncle's (and thereby the garden) does he discover the source of the magic and the modern-day tie that pulls him there.

Comparisons of this book to "The Children of Green Knowe" make perfect sense. As I read this title, it didn't take much urging to be reminded of that other great fantasy in which a boy makes friends with otherworldly children. "The Secret Garden" also pops into the brain, due to its eerie ghostlike wailings and magnificent hidden garden. "Tom's Midnight Garden" is a little more methodical and (dare I say?) modern than these other books, though. Though Tom and Hatty don't initially question why a garden mysteriously appears in his backyard every night, eventually Tom must solve the mystery with a little detective work of his own. It's to the author's credit that by the tale's end, everything has been explained in a believable way. Some fantasy authors are far too willing to show something spectacular and then explain it away with the lame excuse of "it's magic!". Philippa Pearce is no such hack. This is a well-thought through book that justifies its fantasy and still remains fun.

I can't help but wish that reissues of "Tom's Midnight Garden" might consider giving it a bit of an updated cover. The original illustrations by Susan Einzig are inoffensive enough, but wouldn't this book benefit from lush full-page color illustrations from someone like Tasha Tudor, Tony DiTerlizzi, or (as long as I'm indulging myself in pure fantasy) Dave McKean? Slap a post-1958 cover on this puppy (possibly showing Tom getting his head stuck midway through the shed door) and you've got yourself a book that kids would be dying to get their hands on. Instead, you've a title that savvy adult, parents, librarians, and schoolteachers will have to coyly promote. Once the right kind of kid discovers it, however, you'll have a dickens of a time prying it from their hands. A fantasy that deserves more attention.

With the possible exception of Falkner's "Moonfleet" this is my all-time favourite children's book. I loved it as a child, read it as an adolescent, enjoyed it as an adult, & read it aloud to my children as a father. The story here is how a boy finds his way into the past of a house he is visiting, and his growing fascination with the life of a little girl in that past. The style of writing is so matter of fact, i think i truly believed as a child because there is no sense of "look how cute this idea is" you often get in books of the sort. The reader is invited to fully participate in and identify with both Tom and Hattie, and their growing friendship. The climax of the book, as Tom discovers what has truly been happening, never fails to move me to tears; just thinking about Mrs. Bartholomew's line right now is tightening my throat. Read this book.

"Tom's Midnight Garden" belongs on any "Best Novels of the 20th Century" list. I came to "Midnight Garden" through Pearce's other books. Read her ghost stories (many about animals), and tales of English urban and suburban children's lives. Ms. Pearce never talks down to children, treating her readers and creations with respect. Also, the adult insights and regrets that we may have forgotten experiencing when we were young, abound in her work. She is very wise. A quick example: A boy dreads a family get together for great grandmother's 100th birthday celebration because of a vicious, bullying cousin. Nevertheless, the terrible reunion day arrives. During a game of hide and seek, as the bully chases our hero, he happens to duck into a quiet room only to find that the 100 year old grandmother has been warehoused there, wheeled out of the way at her own party. Even though age and infirmity have rendered her hardly able to speak, it seems that she senses the boy's fear as the door handle turns and the bully comes inside. As the bully advances into the room, it's silence is broken by a hideous, ghostly wail. Bully runs terrified from the hellish moan, and great-grandmother's face has a slight smile on it, the only (other) physical action she can manifest. She has moaned and (do I remember correctly?) popped her teeth out and protected the boy the only way she can. But that's not all. Our boy gets away, but thinking back on the incident, wishes he had properly thanked great grandmother for her help. (And here is the greatness of Pearce's art) The obligations not met, connections never made, the friend in need never thanked, the other-aged comrade with whom we now know we should have connected, the good words not spoken, Pearce always has woven into the cloth of the story. The immensity of life and our day-late-dollar-short performance in the world is there to be recognized along with the humor and action of the story. This is bittersweet, profound fiction but no moral is grafted on to her tales. It is there to be seen for he (or she) who has eyes with which to see it. Philippa Pearce, who was a BBC radio dramatist before becoming a children's author, is one of the very fine writers of our century.

I first read this book as a young teenager and no matter how many times I re-read it, I am always moved almost to tears by the depth of feeling the author writes about. A simple concept such as loneliness connects two characters across the abyss of time. The author skillfully handles the idea of the past existing concurrently with the present. The simple wish for a friend is the underlying force of this story. This is a book that once I read, I never forgot.

'Tom's Midnight Garden' is Phillipa Pearce's award-winning novel, as well as her best work - all her other writings are measured by this, and so far none have quite reached its peak. It is a time-slip story, which means I was somewhat cross-eyed by the end of it (I usually avoid time-travelling adventures like the plauge on account of the 'confusing ordering' of them all), but Pearce keeps to all the laws of physics that would apply if one actually *could* time-travel. The real beauty of the story is not the time-travelling at all, but the realism of all the characters, the profound themes concerning the passage of time and growing up, the simple but true friendship between Tom and Hatty, and the idea of a secret garden, not separated from the rest of the world by a mere wall like in [...], but by Space and Time themselves.

Tom Long is being sent from his home and the promise of a long, lazy summer to his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen's dreary, boring flat, as his brother Peter has the measles. Frustrated and rude to begin with, he lives a confined and utterly restricted half-life within their cold and unwelcoming home. In fact, the only thing that proves that time is indeed moving at its normal pace is the ticking of the ancient grandfather clock belonging to old Mrs Bartholemew, the land-lady who lives upstairs. The clock keeps strange time however, often it gives more or less chimes than it's supposed to, and one night Tom is sure that he hears it chime the hour thirteen. Creeping downstairs to investigate, he discovers instead that the backdoor opens out into a beautiful, silent, vast garden. He soon becomes a regular visitor, but only by night, for in the daytime the door instead opens out onto a grimy yard. But in the garden he meets Hatty, a lonely little girl under the tyranny of her unkind aunt and three cousins, and the only being that can actually see him! After the friendship is made, the real adventures start, but threading through all of this is the continual mystery - how did the garden get there? Who is Hatty? Where did she and the garden come from? Are they ghosts or merely images from the past? *Why* is the garden there in the first place?

Pearce treats what is essentially her main character - the garden itself - not as a strange, utterly abnormal event, nor as a comfitable, familiar occurance, but as a ghostly, yet steady place. Tom's reactions to it, from his initial awe, to fright, to intoxication with it is vividly and realistically portrayed so that we too honestly share in these emotions.
It is fascinating to read of Tom's explorations of the garden and the twofold freedom he experiences - first that he is away from the regulations of his aunt and uncle, and second that of his invisibility to the denizens of the garden. Pearce creates beautiful descriptive passages of the garden and surrounding grounds, but marks them with intriguing sentences such as: 'Tom often had the feeling of people having just gone, and an uncomfortable feeling of someone who had *not* gone; someone who, unobserved, observed him. Pearce builds up the tension and in this story magnificently, as Tom gradually builds up his knowledge of the garden and slowly begins to traverse its borders.

Furthermore, Tom's decision to quit the real world to dwell forever within the 'garden-world' is a thought-provoking one, and coupled achingly well with Hatty's growth, movement into 'grown-up' things, and steady forgetting of Tom. The feelings of change and aging reminds me very much of stories concerning Peter Pan and Wendy, however in Barrie's book, where we predominatly see through Wendy's eyes, here we can see how Peter probably felt as an elusive and 'unreal' figure, loosing someone not through death or place but through the simple inevitability of growing up.

Thus the story is definitly not just for kids, as the major message of the book is a bittersweet one - that we must all someday leave our childhoods behind for the bigger realm of adulthood beyond our own backgardens. Yet we need never forget those times, nor loose the friendships we forged within them. Certainly Tom and Hatty didn't.

All children should be given the chance to read this book. It was the favourite story of my childhood. It is a beautiful, haunting evocative story of childhood, growing up, adulthood and old age. It's also unbearably sad, in a happy kind of way, if that makes sense. It's the story of life. It's beautifully written, and a haunting evocation of a place, a garden, long ago - so powerfully written you'll feel you'll come to know every corner of it - the nut stubbs, the greenhouse, the meadow, the sundial wall and the stream and so forth, that it comes alive in your mind - the old fir tree, that Hatty used to like to stand under in a high wind, and feel the roots "pulling like muscles" under her feet - so wonderfully drawn you'll not want to leave it's world. You can read it when a child and appreciate it, and also as an adult and view it from a different perspective, of a story of a bored boy and one very lonely little girl, and how their friendship transcends even time itself. The ending is so powerful, so moving that it'll have you in tears, and yet it's treated without sentimentality and without condescending to it's readers, of any age. This book is a part of my life, forever.

This is a true classic for all time. Buy it today.

I first chanced upon this book as a seven year old. I had read many books before but this one truly opened my mind to the wondrous joy of reading.

Nearly thirty years later I have not yet found a book to surpass it. Re-reading as an adult I still see why its multi-layered, perfectly self-consistent meanings entranced me.

The apparent wish-fulfilment of the story is really only the surface. Around the dream garden and its marvels flow deeper themes: of growing apart and loss of childhood, time as an enemy, and unfathomable yearning. Which is not to say that this is an overwhelmingly sad book, though it is certainly one in which childhood wishes are portrayed as tempered for the first time. Even the sadness can be beautiful because it is part of life; and the book shows that the tyranny of time can be overcome with mind.

I here have the privilege of urging parents to allow their children to discover the joys of literature through this book. It would be delightful to know that children of today could appreciate it too.

Tom's Midnight Garden is an endearing book about a boy who is sent away from his family for the summer due to illness. He goes to stay in a large old house that was once a beautiful estate, but has now been divided into apartments. At first, he is very lonely until he makes a discovery that sends his summer into an exciting twilight zone of adventure. The grandfather clock keeps very unusual time, sending Tom on a midnight escapade into a wonderful garden. Or is it really midnight? There he meets a girl, the only one who can see him, whom he befriends. They have many shared experiences in their little garden world and sometimes out of it, as well. Time passes for the girl, but the magic of the clock and garden always seem to keep Tom at the same age. Eventually, there is a tangible intersecting of their two lives, and through this, a surprising discovery of an old and treasured friend. Tom's Midnight Garden is well written and well paced. A true gem to read aloud or to enjoy by yourself. I recommend it highly. It is available through Amazon.com.

I first read this book at age 12, and still love it today at age 50. As a child, I loved it as a mystery, a ghost story. As I grew older, I loved it for its delving into the mysteries of time and space and religion. Now, it seems to me, most of all, a story of how two lonely children - a liitle boy named Tom and a little girl named Hattie - found each other's worlds and shared their lives. The ending never fails to move me to tears.

Strangely filled me with sorrow. In wonderment at the achievement of the writing, I closed the book, and lay it on my chest. I couldn't let go. I closed my eyes and had to concentrate to get my emotions under control. And failed. Memories of the past, of missed opportunities, failed and half realized relationships, were upon me. And again I knew that all stories at their best redeem. And as such, Tom's Midnight Garden is re-creation in the best, original sense of the word.

And all this from a belated, middle-aged reading of a children's' book.

To say anything about the ingenious structure of the narrative would certainly spoil it for those for whom the reading of it happily still lies in the future. To say that the prose is simple and clear and unobtrusive, would be half-true; It has a peculiarly rhythmic intonation which would make it a treat to hear it read out loud. Like the true subject of the story, time, this quality eludes definition, and has to be experienced by the reading to be understood. It is marvelous.

Having been a voracious reader when I was young, it sometimes seems to me that I've read just about everything worth-while in print. I remember seeing the title in the local library all those years ago, but never took it out. So I've regained what I had discarded, a consolation, when it mattered.

Louis M.