The summer of 1900 promises to be a special one for twelve, soon to be thirteen-year-old Leo Colston. It means a break from school where he was being bullied because other boys discover in his diary his more advanced use of vocabulary than they are used to until he makes up and places a meaningless curse in the diary and two of his nemeses fall from a rooftop. It means going to the home of his best friend, Marcus Maudsley, at Brandham Hall and participating in a sumptuous lifestyle totally foreign to him and his lower class family. It is also a summer during which Leo finds himself surrounded by more adults than he is used to and finding himself often ignored and surprisingly alone, especially when Marcus comes down with a case of the measles. Of the grown-ups in the family, Leo is most intrigued by Marcus' sister, Marian, who gives the boy more attention than the others. The Maudsley family anticipates Marian marrying Viscount Hugh Trimingham, wounded in the Boer War. Leo is "anxious... to be `something' to" Marian. It is during an outing to the river for bathing that Leo first sees a neighbor, Ted Burgess, a farmer "tenant of Black Farm." Seeing the nearly nude, muscular, powerfully built man (the first adult male body Leo has really ever seen), speaks to Leo "of something" he cannot identify. Leo wonders: "What must it feel like to be him, master of those limbs, which have passed beyond the need of gym and playing field and exist for their own strength and beauty?" Through happenstance, a need to belong and make himself of value to others, as well as Leo's attraction to both Marian and Ted, the boy quickly finds himself ensnarled in adult affairs that he doesn't fully understand but which will have considerable consequences for many.
The Go-Between (1953) is considered to be writer L. P. Hartley's (1895-1972) finest novel.
With Leo as his narrator, Hartley gives readers a captivating and utterly believable portrayal of innocence and naïveté in The Go-Between. Unfortunately, it is also a story of betrayal on more than one level. Eager to please and certainly more sensitive than he is willing to admit, Leo is grossly taken advantage of by both Marian and Ted who are quick to see the advantages of Leo serving them as an intermediary, delivering secret messages between the two, arranging clandestine meetings. They are equally swift and effective in winning the boy over, appealing to his needs and seductively acquiring his confidence in a matter that he little understands and which he does little to try to comprehend. Hartley pulls off the almost impossible in that readers, fully aware of what is going on and cognizant of how Leo is being used, should detest the two adults for what they do. However, Marian and Ted prove to be almost as beguiling and charming to the reader as they do to Leo. Although readers never see them as two distraught, frustrated lovers, since the couple are shown only through Leo's eyes, they are seen in somewhat sympathetic light and in his Introduction to his novel, Hartley even admits "as the story went on I softened towards them."
In The Go-Between Hartley not only spins his enthralling tale of Leo, Marian, Ted, and the others gathered at Brandham Hall, but spends a great deal of time bringing the summer of 1900 and life of the upper class to life. Hartley's style in the novel is to write using considerable detail--detail that is quite evocative and appealing to the senses be it sight, smell, taste, or the feel of anything from textures to heat and humidity. Readers are treated to a picture of the calm before the storm--before the evils of World War I would forever change Britain and the rest of the world with its unlimited horrors. Dinners and an almost endless menu of entertaining guests, shopping extravaganzas (especially for clothing that is both appropriate and worthy of the status of the wearer--something that is totally foreign to Leo), and games of cricket are portrayed in detail and as each event comes and goes readers watch with some degree of horror as Leo begins to change, adopting the ways of the privileged. Leo accurately sums up his own evolution stating, "I was in love with the exceptional, and ready to sacrifice all normal happening to it."
At the same time as he chronicles the good life, Hartley gives subtle clues that nothing will or can stay the same. There is tension between the classes, the haves and the have nots, and Marian and Ted's affair certainly is nothing that either the Maudsley family or society is likely to find acceptable. Hartley's almost obsessive references to the weather of the summer of 1900 and its growing heat and discomfort serves as a beautiful metaphor for what is to come both on the personal level for the mismatched trio of characters as well as to the world as a whole. When Leo accidentally discovers how he is being used (although he never really comprehends fully what Marian and Ted are doing), he is left feeling "utterly defeated and let down," deep with "disappointment and disillusion" with the need to regain his "self-respect." Soon, Britain as a nation would experience much of the same.
The final portion of The Go-Between is a spellbinding rendering of the death of innocence. Leo is torn between loyalties, especially when it comes to Marian who he deems "combined the roles of both fairy and mother: the magical benevolence of the one, the natural benevolence of the other." Wishing, hoping, and waiting for things to work themselves out does not pay off for Leo and neither does turning to subterfuge. Desperate to set things right, Leo reverts to what appeared to have led him to success in school with the invention of a "spell" involving some deadly "nightshade" (belladonna) which weaves in and out of the story like an ominous portent. Ironically, just as before, his curse is followed by a drastic change of events, but they are nothing attributable to Leo's "magic" or anything the child could ever wish to happen. Instead, he is brought face-to-face with real life and its tragic possibilities and he comes to the realization that he "had been playing a part, which seemed to have taken in everybody, and most of all myself."
In an Epilogue (which Hartley admits he was chastised for writing), the author skips forward fifty years, allowing Leo to make some final discoveries about that special summer in 1900 as well as about himself which ironically shows readers that time and experience has not truly altered Leo Colston all that much. Paradoxically, in this Leo is not alone. He and the reader also learn the fates of some of the people with whom he spent time, and a not altogether surprising twist about the fate of Marian.
The Go-Between is an unexpectedly thoughtful and stimulating story; not necessarily what a reader might expect from a novel about a child's loss of innocence in a time of innocence. It is also an expressive work of art and a delight to read.
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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
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Dimly I felt that the contrast represented something more than the conflict between Hall and village. It was that, but it was also the struggle between order and lawlessness, between obedience to tradition and defiance of it, between social stability and revolution, between one attitude to life and another.Highlighted by 80 Kindle readers- But every man is important to himself at one time or another; my problem had been to reduce the importance, and spread it out as thinly as I could over half a century.Highlighted by 70 Kindle readers
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Don't Judge Me
Okay, I just started reading this book a few moments ago but I have neither the maturity nor the self-discipline to wait before posting this “review.” There is a typo in the Author's Prologue that is both unfortunate and mildly amusing. My understanding is that this is a terrific book and I'm looking forward to reading it but I hope the rest of the Kindle Edition conforms a bit more closely to Hartley's original. (Or, who knows? Maybe it was, indeed, Hartley's line and he had an oddball sense of humor.)
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Val Brown
Altogether charming story set in 1953
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2023
