The Go-Between (Penguin Modern Classics)

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No," I said wretchedly, for it seemed I was fated to mispronounce Hugh's name. "Hugh, you know, Hugh." I bought this book because I was intrigued by its first line: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” It certainly is an intriguing line, but so much more could have been done with the message than is done here. Douglas MacLean, “Between desire and destruction”, in Understanding Love: Philosophy, Film, and Fiction, Oxford University 2014, [1] This is one of the most perfect novels ever written. It has many layers and levels, thanks to its brilliant narrative structure of an old man recollecting a tragic love story he witnessed in intense close up as a young boy. It is a rare case of a complex narrative structure actually being necessary for the proper exposition of the plot. For the story is not just about what happened when the narrator was a boy, but how it changed his life as a man and how, towards the end of his life, writing about it changed him again. Leo's innocence and naivety can be seen in this quote. He still believes in magic. He thinks he may be able to use this magic to break Marian and Ted apart.

Not long after, Marcus informs Leo that Marian is now engaged to Lord Trimingham. Leo is relieved and believes this means Marian and Ted's letters will now stop. This does not come to pass and Marian again asks Leo to take a letter to Ted. This upsets Leo greatly but he ends up acting as the couple's messenger once again. Porteous, Jacob (5 February 2016). "Michael Crawford To Star In The Go-Between London Premiere At The Apollo Theatre". The messenger of the gods! I thought of that, and even when the attention of the gods had been withdrawn from me, it seemed to enhance my status. I pictured myself threading my way through the Zodiac, calling on one star after another.' Indeed, before he was exiled from Paradise, the young boy was putting down in his diary some very thoughtful lines about ethics and religion and politics (the Boer War in that period). The story is told by a sixty-two year old man, Leo Colston. He writes of his experiences in the summer of 1900 when he was almost thirteen. That summer he was invited to stay with his upper-class friend Marcus Maudsley in their Norfolk estate, Brandham Hall, in England. The story revolves around what happened in those few weeks and how what happened changed Colston's life forever. The story does not feel told, but vividly experienced as the elderly man relives the events of that summer. You never forget that it is the elderly English man speaking. You hear this in his manner of speaking.Though he isn’t allowed to swim yet, Leo joins some of the inhabitants of the Hall who decide to go bathing in a nearby sluice. As the group arrives, they notice the imposing physical presence of Ted Burgess, a nearby tenant farmer on the estate, already in the water. Denys, Marcus’ dim older brother, has a brief conversation with Ted, informing him that Lord Trimingham, the estate’s landowner, will arrive later that evening. Leo is fascinated by Ted’s impressive physicality, but Marian pays him no attention. Marcus è dell’upper class, la sua famiglia ha titoli nobiliari e le pareti della villa sono arredate di ritratti dipinti da pittori celebri e celebrati. Leo, invece, è della middle class: il romanzo è anche un acuto e sensibile ritratto delle due classi e dei loro rapporti, i momenti di maggior imbarazzo per Leo sono quelli legati alla sua condizione sociale, a cominciare dal guardaroba non all’altezza della situazione con solo abiti troppo pesanti per quella calda estate. E più avanti vedremo anche perché la temperatura era alta. As a complete aside, one of the greatest annoyances was the repeated trope of mispronouncing the name Hugh. A constant play on Hugh/you, which first time was charming; by the fifth or sixth time I wanted to step into the story and slap him silly, or into oblivion.

At the beginning of The Go-Between, it is clear that the young Leo is a very innocent child. He still believes in magic and sees the world in a childlike way. Leo is aware of the adult world around him but does not have access to it yet. For example, he begs Ted to explain sex to him but in a moment of innocence refers to it as 'spooning'.This is a very beautiful little book in which a man reminisces about his youth and one summer in particular when he went to stay at his schoolmate’s manor house, Brandham Hall. It's filled with a bittersweet nostalgia and Hartley really captures youthful enthusiasm, innocence and naivete through Leo. There's a sense of both longing and misery in him. He wants so very much to be a part of this group of dazzling upper class people, but he is never quite part of their world, no matter how much they humour him. One of the most memorable first lines I have come across in my long years of reading, and a moving evocation of a fraught coming of age at the tail end of a pious, rigid yet prosperous Victorian society. Invited down for the summer to the opulent Brandham Hall by Marcus (a friend from his public school), Leo feels both enthralled by the prospect of mingling with the rich Maudsley family and anxious about his own social status. There have been regular editions from Penguin Books and other sources since 1958. By 1954, translations were being prepared in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Japanese, French and Italian. Others followed later in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian and German. The novel has also been set as an exam text with a study guide dedicated to it [4] and there have been interdisciplinary studies on psychological [5] and philosophical themes there. [6] Interpretations [ edit ]

The Go-Between was an immediate success when it was published in 1953. My only awareness of it, was from the 1970 film adaptation which I watched after reading this. It's good, but not a patch on this, the original book.

Like Henry James, his most obvious literary forebear, Hartley examines the nuances of morality with a shimmering exactness, focusing on characters like Leo, the narrator of The Go-Between, caught between natural impulses and the social conventions that would thwart them. It is a masterpiece of double-speak and secrecy, somehow both ambiguous and direct. It works a magic on obviousness, so that it becomes a novel about British embarrassment and embarrassing Britishness. It's a book which subtly, almost mischievously, rejects subtlety: "the facts of life were a mystery to me, though several of my schoolfellows claimed to have penetrated it." But couched and quiet at its centre is a whole other novel at a further level of knowing, innocence and unsaidness. Now, in a reread, I can see what I certainly couldn't consciously have seen or said in 1979, that Leo, in love with both the concept of Marian and the "half-unwilling gentleness", the feather on the tiger, the "natural" body of Burgess, is a go-between in quite another way. This dilemma between his intentions and the results of his go-between actions in the summer of 1900 will haunt Leo Colston for the rest of his life, until he is ready to revisit the place in 1952. When Leo next sees Marian, he changes one crucial detail of Ted’s message. He tells Marian that Ted wants to meet on Friday (the day of Leo’s birthday party) at 6:00 p.m., when in fact Ted had said 6:30. He mentions that Ted will be going to war, which greatly distresses Marian. Leo asks why she can’t just marry Ted—she say’s it’s impossible. Leo sneaks out late one night and pulls up the Deadly Nightshade, wanting to use some of it in a spell to break Ted and Marian apart.