politerobot

A wonderfully lovely, and engaging little book. The descriptions are to die for, and the immense happiness of it filled me up. I wanted to run out into the spring myself. It is so colourful and vivid I didn't feel like I was reading at all, I felt as if I was in the garden, quite a child, seeing, hearing and smelling all the animals and flowers. Can't wait for winter to end...

The only thing that irked me, and to quite some degree too, was the fact that while Mary was given such a large portion of the story in the beginning, she was pushed entirely into the background by Colin in the end. I think her recovery and growth would have been worthy of equal scrutiny as Colin's, especially since she started everything - she found and tended the garden, and she was the one who stood up to Colin.

Mary is an absolutely excellent character, and the scene where she raged against Colin's hysterics had me in fits of laughter. In my opinion she and Dickon were by far the most interesting and adorable characters in the novel. I would have loved for her to have a lot more focus than she had during the last portion of the novel. But in the end Colin was all that mattered. It annoyed me so greatly it lost a star in rating. Had it been more devoted to Mary it might had ended up as one of my favourites.

But still, a colourful, tender and funny book, which I really, really liked. It quite made me want a garden of my own to tend to.