The Go-Between

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

I'm a sucker for a story where the narrator recalls events from his or her earlier life. Be it Brideshead Revisited or A Dance To The Music of Time, there is something about the mix of nostalgia and melancholy in such books that strikes deep.

The Go-Between is one such book. A tale of childhood, deceit and desire at the dawn of the 20th Century, it is told in flashback and is quite wonderfully written. Leo Colston is a man of 60 years or so, a buttoned down, repressed individual with no memory of the events of a long, hot summer in 1900 until he chances across his old diary from that year and it all comes tumbling back.

Invited by his school friend, Marcus, to stay at Brandham Hall for the summer holidays, Leo becomes embroiled in a love triangle between the rough and ready farmer Ted Burgess, Marcus's older sister Marian and the scarred war veteran Trimingham. Persuaded to carry messages between Ted and Marian he becomes entangled in an adult world he doesn't understand, where class and the rigid mores of Edwardian society make for a dangerous game.

Across that baking hot summer Leo is cajoled, flattered and finally pushed to breaking point by Marian and Ted's illicit affair (although he has no idea that that is what it is), made all the more painful by his knowledge that Marian is engaged to Trimingham.

Hartley's prose flows like silk across the page, immensely satisfying to read, never hard going. His poignant tale of a Leo's world being turned upside down by the adults around him is superbly told and although you can see what's coming by the end, it is still shocking and painful.

An excellent book that has a deserved reputation as one of the best novels in English literature.

Man, this was so beautiful and frustrating. The writing is so well done, so evocative. The build up to the last chapter.. The framing device was interesting and the epilogue was such a great end. Leo was so hard to have as a narrator sometimes though! He's so naive and it's hard to watch sometimes. Marian is so frustrating, using Leo how she does, but in the epilogue he finally sees it... and doesn't do anything different. It's such an interesting look at how one instance can alter our lives. I only wish I hadn't watched an adaptation a few years ago, I think it would've hit harder.

I have only just started, and despite really enjoying Hartley's lyrical prose I'm finding that the heavy-handed editing (in the 2003 Penguin edition)is getting on my nerves. I'm one of those people foolish enough to read the introduction before I start and to at least try to read the notes, but Brooks-Davies has committed the cardinal sin of thoroughly spoiler-ing the book in the introduction then adding insult to injury by over end noting (at least five notes per page)with further spoilers and over-analysis. Save it for the study edition, Douglas, I just want to read and analyse the book myself and discover its mysteries in peace.

Update: the notes weren't too bad. At least it explained all the French conversation, although it was like having an over-eager guide alongside. Having read the NYRB Classics introduction by Colm Toibin (the introduction and some reading notes are available here: NYRB Classics site) I'd probably recommend that edition.

Review: Beautiful book, Hartley really captured the young narrator in his innocence and misunderstanding the world the ‘grown-ups' inhabited, also the period before the Great War. Love the way that Ted and Marian's actions are left to our interpretation and all the little things that the narrator brings in such as the references to the zodiac, the use of Belladonna as a symbolic device and how Leo believes as a young boy that he can perform magic. Wish I hadn't read the introduction through, as I think it would've been one of those books that the less you know about it in advance, the better. Shocking ending though, even though I knew what was going to happen, I didn't expect it to end that abruptly.