Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (Oxford University Press)
Library Book
Although the new school year for the Kentishbookboy hasn't included writing book reviews so far we are still reading books together occasionally, the first one for 2021 was Tom's Midnight Garden. I remember reading this a child, and then again more recently when I was studying children's literature. I think that we picked this book as opposed to any other as it was on a list of titles that were recommended for Year 6 pupils.
The Kentishbookboy (and his mum) didn't fall in love with the book in the same way that I had as a child, they found Tom himself to be an annoying character and I can see where they are coming from. He certainly isn't very much like the 'heroes' of more modern books.
I was more surprised at how old fashioned the book felt on this reread. Then I did some sums... the book was written in 1958 and I imagine that it was a contemporary setting. The time travel takes us back to the 1890s. This means Tom travels around 60 years in time. However reading the book now (2021) we are travelling back the same amount of time to meet Tom - the culture shock for the Kentishbookboy was the same as Tom's!
I still love the book, but again it is definitely a book shadow that I was remembering - scenes that I recall as being huge and important (because of the pictures they created in my mind) actually came at the very end of the book and weren't as pivotal as I thought. There were huge chunks of Hatty's story that I'd forgotten. As well as the very 1950s attitudes of Tom's aunt & uncle.
I'm a bit sad that the Kentishbookboy didn't love the book as much as I did but Tom's life was far closer to being one I recognised - I was only reading it with a 30 year gap after all and there hadn't been quite the same technological advances in those 3 decades as we've seen since the 1990s. Perhaps I should try to find him a modern classic (not fantasy) that has the same age gap between setting and now to see how that fares...
