- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition (25 Feb 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140282661
- ISBN-13: 978-0140282665
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 10.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 53,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there", begins L. P. Hartley's tale of nostalgia, the reawakening of lost memories, and the sexual awareness of an adolescent boy. It is 1952. Leo, now in his sixties, comes upon an old diary and is drawn back to the hot summer of 1900, when he visited Brandham Hall. He has managed to forget serving during his stay as a messenger between a young woman and her lover -- and to forget also the devastating events that ensued and destroyed his beliefs and his hopes for the future. As his memories begin to unfold and Leo recalls the lost era of Victorian country gentry, he finds he must reinterpret his newly discovered past in terms of his present life. This first annotated edition of Hartley's 1953 classic contains a number of corrections based on the surviving handwritten manuscript.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the uncharacteristically hot English summer of 1900, Leo Colston, a middle-class school-boy living with his widowed mother, is invited to spend his holidays at the home of a wealthy classmate. Leo is seduced by the lifestyle of the wealthy Maudsley family, and develops a crush on the eldest daughter, Marian. When his friend is confined to his room by illness, Leo finds himself pressed into service as a go-between for Marian and her secret love, a lowly local farmer named Ted. With only a very limited understanding of how the world of grown-ups works, Leo tries to make sense of this relationship, and struggles to use his school-boy logic to prevent it from devastating both himself and everyone around him
It is surprising that many people have interpreted this novel as a tragic love story, in the vein of a thousand tales from Greek myths to Romeo and Juliet to 'Titanic'. But to make this interpretation is to fall into the same mistakes that the young Leo initially does. Marian is not a virtuous paragon – she is a flighty, manipulative young lady with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Ted is not a hero – he is, as the novel’s older characters hint, a hot-tempered charmer who can't keep his pants on. In fact, if anyone comes out of this well, it’s Viscount Trimington, who shows himself to be a perfect gentleman. He is, tellingly, the only one in the love triangle who shows the slightest bit of self-discipline.
There seems to be no doubt in Hartley’s mind that Marian and Ted are in love, but he does not suggest, as so many bad songs do, that love conquers all or, more importantly, that everything done in the name of love must be forgiven. Love, allowed free rein in Marian and Ted’s hearts, destroys them and everyone connected to them. Hartley does not paint Hugh or Mrs Maudsley as repressive villains who stood in love’s true way, but as interested parties who got caught in the crossfire. He seems to regard the lovers as unfortunate fools who either couldn't or wouldn't show a bit of restraint. It is a fresh perspective, and one that probably doesn't come out in literature enough.
But possibly the most attractive aspect of the novel is the murkiness of the characters’ motivations. Do Ted and Marian actually like Leo, or are they just using him? Leo is never quite sure, and neither is the reader. In the end, we can allow the evidence to sway us either way, or come down uneasily in the middle. Love can redeem the wicked, but it can also corrupt the good.
It is surprising that many people have interpreted this novel as a tragic love story, in the vein of a thousand tales from Greek myths to Romeo and Juliet to 'Titanic'. But to make this interpretation is to fall into the same mistakes that the young Leo initially does. Marian is not a virtuous paragon – she is a flighty, manipulative young lady with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Ted is not a hero – he is, as the novel’s older characters hint, a hot-tempered charmer who can't keep his pants on. In fact, if anyone comes out of this well, it’s Viscount Trimington, who shows himself to be a perfect gentleman. He is, tellingly, the only one in the love triangle who shows the slightest bit of self-discipline.
There seems to be no doubt in Hartley’s mind that Marian and Ted are in love, but he does not suggest, as so many bad songs do, that love conquers all or, more importantly, that everything done in the name of love must be forgiven. Love, allowed free rein in Marian and Ted’s hearts, destroys them and everyone connected to them. Hartley does not paint Hugh or Mrs Maudsley as repressive villains who stood in love’s true way, but as interested parties who got caught in the crossfire. He seems to regard the lovers as unfortunate fools who either couldn't or wouldn't show a bit of restraint. It is a fresh perspective, and one that probably doesn't come out in literature enough.
But possibly the most attractive aspect of the novel is the murkiness of the characters’ motivations. Do Ted and Marian actually like Leo, or are they just using him? Leo is never quite sure, and neither is the reader. In the end, we can allow the evidence to sway us either way, or come down uneasily in the middle. Love can redeem the wicked, but it can also corrupt the good.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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! Mary Whipple
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One of the best books I have ever read. A sad and lonely old man reflects on the events of one late boyhood summer at an aristocratic house in rural England. His emotional, passionate and social assumptions were explored so violently in that visit that he doesn't seem to have ever recovered in the fifty years since . It can seem like a slow read at times but I feel that the pace matches the oppressive atmosphere of the setting.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Quite perfect
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there ... from the first sentence I was entranced by this masterpiece of a novel, set during an Edwardian summer heatwave... Read more
Published 23 months ago by booksetc
As perfect as a novel can be
This has to be my all-time favourite novel. It has, of course, one of the most famous opening lines of any work of fiction: "The past is a foreign country, they do things... Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2010 by hiljean
A powerful story told with restrained language
I was gripped by this novel from the very first few lines and Iread it pretty much at one sitting. The author writes in a style that is apparently rather concerned only with the... Read more
Published on 3 Nov 2005
Dull, uninspiring and compulsory!
This has to be one of the most tedious books that I have ever read, and guess what? I have an essay to write on the "Importance of symbolism in the... Read more
Published on 8 Nov 2001
A fantastic coming-of-age tale
One can easily see why this is a popular choice to study at GCSE; not only is this a tale of a schoolboy's gradual (and eventually total and sudden) loss of innocence over the... Read more
Published on 27 Aug 2000
Fab Book
This is the only book I have ever read twice in succession - it really is wonderful. As the heat of an Edwardian summer rises, so the passion between two lovers from different... Read more
Published on 3 Jun 2000 by P. Dickinson
One of the finest novels of the Twentieth Century
The Go Between is a finely crafted novel written from the point of view of a man in his twilight years, bitter and cynical who has never been able to love, reflecting on the events... Read more
Published on 23 Jan 2000 by Mr. A. J. Middleton
A retrospective exploration of lost innocence.
Leo Colston in his sixties, a dry academic with a barren life, finds among his childhood memories a diary which opens up the past that until then had been obscured by trauma. Read more
Published on 9 Dec 1999
A fantastic book which grips your interest to the end
An excellently portrayed book showing how one boy's life was transformed by involving himeself in the plot of 'The Go-Between. Read more
Published on 11 Sep 1999
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