The Go-Between

L.P. Hartley (1895–1972), the son of the director of a brickworks, attended Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, before setting out on a career as a literary critic and writer of short stories. In 1944 he published his first novel, The Shrimp and the Anemone, the opening volume of the trilogy Eustace and Hilda. In the spring of 1952, Hartley began The Go-Between, a novel strongly rooted in his childhood. By October he had already completed the first draft, and the finished product was published in early 1953. The Go-Between became an immediate critical and popular success and has long been considered Hartley's finest book. His many other novels include Facial Justice, The Hireling, and The Love-Adept. »

Colm Tóibín is the author of five novels, including The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship, and The Heather Blazing. The Master, a novel based on the life of Henry James, was published in 2004 and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It also won the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year Award in 2005 and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. Among his nonfiction works are Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe, and, most recently, Love in a Dark Time. In 2004, his first play, Beauty in a Broken Place, was produced in Dublin where he lives. »

By L.P. Hartley
Introduction by Colm Tóibín

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

Summering with a fellow schoolboy on a great English estate, Leo, the hero of L. P. Hartley's finest novel, encounters a world of unimagined luxury. But when his friend's beautiful older sister enlists him as the unwitting messenger in her illicit love affair, the aftershocks will be felt for years. The inspiration for the brilliant Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates, The Go-Between is a masterpiece—a richly layered, spellbinding story about past and present, naiveté and knowledge, and the mysteries of the human heart. This volume includes, for the first time ever in North America, Hartley's own introduction to the novel.

Read the introduction (PDF)

View the reading group guide (PDF)

Reviews

Years ago as a young teenager, this was one of the first books that I checked out from the 'grown-up' section of the library. From the opening sentence of its prologue, I found myself captured by its wistful tone. As an adult reader, I found its tale of a 60-year-old man recalling a painful episode in his youth even more heartbreaking. It remains one of my favorite books.
— Vincent Desjardins, Snow Goose Bookstore, Stanwood, WA

A delightful, most readable story...action and meaning reinforce one another to produce one of those rare books which enrich and enlarge one's own experience.
— The New York Times

It is always a pleasure to watch a conscious literary artist at work. L. P. Hartley is such a one. All his effects are deliberately sought and brilliantly brought off. Yet a thread of shining lyricism runs through...it is a beautiful and controlled feat of story-telling.
— Washington Star

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.
— Jay Parini, The New York Times

A beautifully written and absorbing book.
— Atlantic Monthly

Mr. Hartley is amazingly good, and no reader of serious fiction should miss this book.
— Los Angeles Times

Its famous formulation about the past sets the tone: this is a strange and beautiful book. I first read it in my early teens, and its atmosphere of yearning for lost times and of childish innocence challenged has haunted me ever since.
— Ian McEwan

A masterpiece of innocence lost.
— The Guardian

Also see:

Eustace and Hilda
By L.P. Hartley
Introduction by Anita Brookner

The three books gathered together as Eustace and Hilda explore a brother and sister's lifelong relationship. Hilda, the older child, is both self-sacrificing and domineering, as puritanical as she is gorgeous; Eustace is a gentle, dreamy, pleasure-loving boy.

L. P. Hartley Set

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $14.95
Price: $11.21 (25% off)

Mar 31, 2002
344 pages
ISBN: 0940322994
9780940322998
Literature in English
NYRB Classics

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The Go-Between

By L.P. Hartley Introduction by Colm Tóibín

Reviews

Also see:

By L.P. Hartley
Introduction by Colm Tóibín