Book review: Tom's Midnight Garden

Last of the three books I'm reading from a Guardian list of children's books, and this is by far the best one I've read from the list. When Tom is sent to stay with his aunt and uncle while his brother Peter is recovering from the measles, Tom is reluctant and unhappy; he expects to be bored in their poky little flat, and is derisive of the malfunctioning grandfather clock that never strikes the right hour. But then he discovers that when the clock strikes thirteen, the back door leads to a beautiful garden that isn't there during the day. Is the garden ever real? Tom learns that in the garden he's insubstantial, seemingly invisible to people and able to walk through doors with some effort, and meets Hatty, a young girl who can see and hear him, and they become friends. Is Hatty a ghost? Why is her age changing from visit to visit? It's a really charming book, gently nostalgic for the late Victorian era -- the book was written in 1958, when grandparents could have grown up under a Victorian household. I really enjoyed the novel's highlight scene, in which Tom and Hatty go on a cross-country skate along a river, and the ending is wistful and affectionate.