The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley (some spoilers)

Wonderfully appropriate cover image

First, a word about the edition.  I’ve been reading the 2003 Penguin edition edited by Douglas Brooks-Davies and not been that keen. His introduction and notes are peppered with numerous spoilers and he has a tendency to over-analyse everything. If I was studying the book properly or re-reading it I would be really happy with it, but as it is a book that should be read without that much knowledge of the plot, I was disappointed with the heavy-handed editing. Having read the Colm Toibin introduction (available here on the NYRB Classics website), I think I’d prefer that edition. 

Leaving the edition aside, I really liked this book.  Hartley uses lyrical, evocative prose which perfectly captures the voice of young Leo and gives a sense of the period. I could see the resemblance between Hartley’s narrative style and Proust’s, but it wasn’t quite as difficult to read – paragraphs are shorter and are interspersed with dialogue. 

The plot is quite simple, but builds tension well. It begins with Leo remembering the summer of 1900 spent at Brandham Hall with a school friend. Leo innocently agrees to pass love letters between Marian (the school friend’s sister) and Ted (a local farmer) not realising why he is doing it or the implications that it will have for the family and for himself. 

The book works because of the way it is narrated in the first person with Leo gradually discovering what he is doing. He is an incredibly naïve character who is teased by the family because of it, and several humourous incidents in the novel occur due to his misunderstanding or interpreting something too literally. He lives with his widowed mother with whom he has a close relationship and is a rather sensitive child, who believes that he can affect circumstances with magic. With a lack of male guidance at home and feeling an outsider due to the fact that he is from a lower class than his friend Marcus, he is attracted to Marian, to Lord Trimingham (Hugh) and to Ted in turn.  

His relationship with Ted is peculiar; there is a suggestion that he is sexually attracted in the way that he admires Ted’s body and particularly in a deleted scene where Ted gives him a swimming lesson.  But this is a book which is about sexual awakening, Hartley uses belladonna as a symbolic device suggesting the ‘poisonous’ sexual undercurrents, alongside the imagery of the zodiac signs of the Virgin and the Water-Carrier and the changes in temerature.  Although it isn’t as explicit, the passage describing the swimming scene where Leo first observes Ted reminded me of Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, there is a similar overlap between the natural world and sexuality, and like Mellors, Ted is unashamed of his body and sexuality:

His clothes were lying at his side; he hadn’t bothered to seek the shelter of the rushes. Nor did he now. Believing himself to be unseen by the other bathers, he gave himself up to being alone with his body.

The first person narrative leaves the relationship between Ted and Marian open to interpretation.  Marian can be read as a rather selfish, cold character who intends to use Leo from the moment he arrives at Brandham Hall, and is using Ted as a bit of fun before she marries Hugh, or as a rather mixed-up woman who is about to be forced into a marriage with a man she doesn’t love for the sake of the propriety of marrying within her own class and living at Brandham Hall who has an intense relationship with a local farmer. By the end, many years later, it is clear that she is still deceiving herself about the relationship with Ted, having intended to carry it on even when she was married.  Hartley apparently intended the reader to disapprove of the relationship, particularly of Ted apparently seducing Marian, but despite Leo’s suspicion that he is being used by both parties, there is something nice about the character of Ted, he is probably the most likable character in the book as the upper class characters can be rather cold and distant. 

The ending, before the epilogue is devastating. Although I knew what was going to happen, it was still a surprise. It is done in such a quick way.  People have criticised the prologue and the epilogue as a framing devices, in some ways the epilogue could be seen as somehow ‘softening’ the impact of the end of the story, but in other ways this is a book about the past and its effect particularly on Leo, but also on other characters in the novel, both the events of the novel and the significance of the wars the characters have participated in. The prologue and the epilogue show that Leo has rejected relationships completely. Perhaps this is because of his latent homosexuality, but there is a sense that after his nervous collapse, Leo not only finds it difficult to form romantic relationships, but also finds it difficult to trust anyone. 

Overall, it's one of those books that stays with you, and having thought about it since finishing the book I find myself realising more about the book. It will quite likely become a re-read in the future.