The Go-Between (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The Go-Between is a novel by L. P. Hartley published in 1953. His best-known work, it has been adapted several times for stage and screen. The book gives a critical view of society at the end of the Victorian era through the eyes of a naïve schoolboy outsider. This marks the moment when Leo becomes a messenger for people. This originally happens because Trimingham asks Leo to tell Marian she has left her prayer book in church. He dubs Leo a messenger and Leo is initially very pleased by this title. Why should we call ourselves sinners? Life was life, and people acted in a certain way, which sometimes caused one pain.

il 1900, siamo nella campagna del Norfolk. Si parla di guerra, ed è quella tra inglesi e boeri in Sudafrica, nella quale il visconte Hugh ha combattuto uscendone col volto sfregiato brutalmente. Do you remember what that summer was like? – how much more beautiful than any since?” This made for perfect heatwave reading over the past couple of weeks: very English and very much of the historical period that it evokes, it is a nostalgic work remembering one summer when everything changed. When I started reading this book, it immediately brought Ian McEwan to mind. So it came as no surprise to hear McEwan list Hartley among his influences. There's very much an Atonement vibe about this book-- the adolescent protagonist witnessing an affair between adult lovers, the naivete of the young mind, one intense summer that changes everything... it's all there. I really enjoyed it. The boy (Leo is his name) is also playing out a CinderFella fantasy, it strikes me. (With apologies to Jerry Lewis!) Leo is a wide-eyed boy who believes in spells and curses and that adults are always right. He gets caught up in this world-- one that seems somehow separate from the rest of reality. I love books that capture those intense little bubbles of people, time and place, where it feels like a separate universe has been created with its own set of rules. In this universe, Leo becomes, as the title suggests, a go-between for forbidden lovers Marian and Ted.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. This is one of the those classic novels that has been gathering dust on my shelves for what seems like forever, so I finally decided to give it a whirl. It allowed him to evoke a past, a time half a century earlier, a golden age, as he saw it, of Victorian morals and manners, an age of innocence in the short time before its shattering.

I am a cynical bitch. I don’t read this romantic genre often - but wait - it isn’t really “romantic” in the sense of unbridled break from reality. No, this is powerful emotion grounded in harsh reality. This book moved me deeply. It’s got all the feels and it is extraordinarily beautifully written. If you want a bit of nostalgia for lost innocence and days gone by, this is spot on. The themes are interesting: a child's incomprehension of adult behavior and ambiguous speech, love, death and deception. It is about the simultaneous process of losing the naivety of a child and the abrupt awakening to the deceptions of adulthood. It draws a rather negative view of British upper crust values and mode of life. I find the consequences of the events as they are drawn in the story to be exaggerated. Matters end badly, and Leo leaves under a cloud with death and discord behind him. Cue the return to the present (or at least 1950) as Jim Broadbent’s older Leo meets up with Vanessa Redgrave’s older Marian. Even decades later she is shown as contemptuous, still wanting to manipulate Leo, still wanting him as a go-between. All very intense and true to life, where there are no final endings and some things never change. The Novel is structured in two parts, with an older Leo reflecting on his memories of that summer when he was 13 years old and the events that took place at Brandham Hall, the country estate where he was staying. As the summer progresses, Leo becomes increasingly entangled in the affair between Marian and Ted, and he struggles to understand the complexities of adult relationships and the consequences of his actions.Ted was an unofficial rival of Lord Trimingem in the fight for the heart of Marian, but she told Leo that she and Ted had only business correspondence. Leo held very significant information, on which depended too much - in fact the future of her family, who wanted Marian to marry the Lord, and so to strengthen their position in society. Trimingem is opposed to Ted - he is not developed physically, and on his face has a scar obtained during the Anglo-Boer War. He was the owner of the estate and all the land around. He clearly was unsympathetic to Marian, but according to the unwritten laws of British society all must be decided in his favor, for farmer is no match for the Lord and feelings here mean nothing. Each of them served as a means: Ted - for amorous pleasures of Marian, Trimingem - for elevation of the whole family in the social hierarchy. But it is the Epilogue which made this book for me. Until then, the narrator's voice was that adolescent, seeing things with open eyes but not yet understanding. No one will tell him what 'spooning' is and conversations splinter when one says 'Hugh' and the other hears 'you'. Such is the confusion when a boy turns thirteen. What to make of lessons of 'right' and 'wrong' and what is proper and what is not when Life's joys and tragedies yet remain unexplained. But, Proustians, the Epilogue begins with this line: When I put down my pen, I meant to put away my memories with it. I felt nothing for any of the characters. The events left me totally unmoved. There is a coldness, a steeliness in the manner in which the story is related. This coldness reflects who Leo Colston came to be, but I find it questionable that such a man would have any interest in telling us his story! The forbidden love story between Marian and Ted in The Go-Between makes the novel a romance. But the ending makes it clear that Hartley's novel is specifically a tragic romance. The lovers do not end up together and are torn apart by circumstances as is common in tragic romances. Leo is thirteen years old though looks younger and is taken under Marian’s wing as a project – and also to act as a messenger (the titular go-between) passing notes allowing her to make liaisons with her lover. Leo also gets to know Ted, though the relationship has complexities – Leo is conscious something is going and realises it is to do with “spooning”, even if he doesn’t know what it is. Ted acts as a replacement father and tries (badly) to explain matters of the heart, and the mysteries of spooning.