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Title: The Go-Between (New York Review Books Classics) by L. P. Hartley, Colm Toibin ISBN: 0-940322-99-4 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 12 March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.73 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wistful, chaste, and utterly captivating.
Comment: Resembling both McEwan's Atonement and Frayn's Spies in its plot, this 1953 novel, recently reprinted, tells of a pre-adolescent's naive meddling in the love lives of elders, with disastrous results. Set in the summer of 1900, when the hopes and dreams for the century were as yet untarnished by two world wars and subsequent horrors, this novel is quietly elegant in style, its emotional upheavals restrained, and its 12-year-old main character, Leo Colston, so earnest, hopeful, and curious about life that the reader cannot help but be moved by his innocence.
Leo's summer visit to a friend at Brandham Hall introduces him to the landed gentry, the privileges they have assumed, and the strict social behaviors which guide their everyday lives. Bored and wanting to be helpful when his friend falls ill, Leo agrees to be a messenger carrying letters between Marian, his host's sister, and Ted Burgess, her secret love, a farmer living nearby. Catastrophe is inevitable--and devastating to Leo. In descriptive and nuanced prose, Hartley evokes the heat of summer and the emotional conflicts it heightens, the intensity rising along with the temperature. Magic spells, creatures of the zodiac, and mythology create an overlay of (chaste) paganism for Leo's perceptions, while widening the scope of Hartley's focus and providing innumerable parallels and symbols for the reader.
The emotional impact of the climax is tremendous, heightened by the author's use of three perspectives--Leo Colston as a man in his 60's, permanently damaged by events when he was 12; Leo as a 12-year-old, wrestling with new issues of class, social obligation, friendship, morality, and love, while inadvertently causing a disaster; and the reader himself, for whom hindsight and knowledge of history create powerful ironies as he views these events and the way of life they represent. Some readers have commented on Leo's unrealistic innocence in matters of sex, even as a 12-year-old, but this may be a function of age. For those of us who can remember life without TV and the computer, it is not so far-fetched to imagine a life in which "mass communication" meant the telegraph and in which "spooning" was an adults-only secret!
Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful in imagery and emotion it is adolescence revisited.
Comment: Every time this book is read, another aspect comes into view. Written in the context of a middle aged man finding old letters and a diary in his attic, it quickly becomes clear that this man is a batchelor who has lead an emotionally shallow life. He is Leo, a boy of 12, invited to spend his summer school break with a more affluent friend and finds himself taken into a world where there are no longer any rules or structures to support him. In the chaos that he triggers he tries to find order in amongst his world and the results in doing so are catastrophic to him and the people around him. Imagery is strong, and wonderfully intertwined between the lines. Hartley's skill lets us see the characters through the eyes of a boy, standing on the precipice of adulthood and yet still living within a life of childhood fantasies where his world does make sense. He does not understand the machinations of the adults around him. Passion, deception and innocence are overlaid with stong imageries; the Zodiac, Leo is Mercury, messenger of the Gods, mercury also gauging the ever rising heat of the summer, and of those passions of the adults circling around him. Being Robin Hood in his suit of green to his Fair Maid Marian, but green also meaning innocence and naivety. Misunderstandings, the hero, disfigured, his face unable to reveal what his heart feels. The story pulls you through each humid emotion filled day to its climatic end. And at the end, what becomes of the characters, of those 'planets' circling around Leo and the virgin? Is she a calculating woman, ruthless and insensitive to the feelings of a 12 year old boy, or should a woman never be blamed for what happens? Is Leo the author of his own misfortune, despite his age? What is the use of blame? Arguably the last chapter, may be a dissapointment to some readers, for perhaps it reveals too much. There are no questions left unanswered for us afterwards. The mystery is gone. Perhaps that is what Hartley was trying to achieve.
Rating: 5
Summary: Totally convincing
Comment: A tale of innocence betrayed, in which a school boy is used as go-between in an affair between the lady he worships and a farmer. A vivid picture of Edwardian England, in which the natural ebullience, complacency and optimism of the age give way to emotional defeat for all concerned. Also a good movie, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.
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Title: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics) by L. P. Hartley, Anita Brookner ISBN: 0940322803 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 23 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: A High Wind in Jamaica (New York Review Books Classics) by Richard Hughes, Francine Prose ISBN: 0940322153 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Colour of Blood by Brian Moore ISBN: 0586087370 Publisher: HarperCollins (paper) Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: A Month in the Country (New York Review Books Classics) by James Lloyd Carr, Michael Holroyd ISBN: 0940322471 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: A Way of Life, Like Any Other (New York Review Books Classics) by Darcy O'Brien, Seamus Heaney ISBN: 094032279X Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 09 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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