I've been thinking a lot lately about L.P. Hartley's novel, The Go-Between, a brilliant evocation of the loss of childhood innocence. It's a story that works well on so many levels. It's elegantly written with layers of meaning, and a story best left to simmer once read as there is so much to think about. Certainly this is one of the finest novels I've read in a very long time.
After coming across a long forgotten journal Leo Colston looks back on a long hot summer in 1900 when as a schoolboy he spent several weeks at the country house of a classmate. Leo is an only child who lives with his widowed mother in a style far less grand than his wealthy friend Marcus. Leo is in awe of the Maudsley family and perhaps a bit snobbish in his wish to emulate them, though it's obvious his presence is a somewhat uneasy one. As a schoolboy who lives by a strictly codified set of rules he's only partially able to navigate this strange new world. Marcus he understands, the adults not so much. Marcus's beautiful older sister, Marian, takes him under her wing and he soon develops a crush on her.
When Marcus becomes ill and is confined to his room Leo is at loose ends. The Maudsley family and their guests partake of all the pleasures a country house has to offer, but Leo is only peripherally involved. He's caught by a local farmer sliding down his haystacks. Anger leads to opportunity when Ted Burgess realizes Leo is a guest at Brandham Hall. Ted asks him to deliver a note to Marian, and eager to please and occupy himself, Leo readily accepts, though he doesn't understand the true nature of their relationship. Although it's not been formally announced, Leo is privy to the secret that Marion is going to marry a viscount, Lord Trimingham. Hugh Trimingham is one of the few adults that treats Leo with some modicum of respect without condescending to him, and Leo admires him in turn.
Dubbed 'The Postman' by Ted, Leo happily serves as a go-between between him and Marian--the only way the two have to communicate, but an indiscretion reveals something of what the two are up. Schoolboy rules allow that an open envelope means the letter inside can be read. As precocious as Leo is, and nearing his thirteenth birthday, he's still naive to the subtleties of adult love and intimacy. He likes Ted, but Marian is going to marry Lord Trimingham. This is the way things are meant to be. Confused by what he's learned and feeling party to a deception he wants no part of and doesn't really understand, he thinks he can conjure up magic to extricate himself and set to rights Marian and Hugh. He's had success in school with his spells, so he devises a plan that will separate the two, which in the end leads to tragic consequences.
What's especially sad about this story isn't just a schoolboy's loss of innocence in becoming wise to the ways adult world but the way in which he's initiated, so to speak. He loses not only his innocence but his ability to form any meaningful relationship of his own later in life, so startling is the revelation he is to have about Marian and Ted. Leo tells his story from the perspective of a life more than half lived looking back on these forgotten events that he begins to recall with the aid of his journal. It's only later that he fully comes to the realization of what that long, hot summer meant. This is a story not just about a loss of innocence but of deception and betrayal and manipulation.
The novel is filled with nostalgia, a longing for a simpler way of life when things were more certain. Surely at the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the Edwardian moral choices must have been easier, or were at least not as open to interpretation. The Boer War was in the background, and the two world conflicts were still far off on the horizon, but perhaps a loss of cultural innocence was coming as well. Life was simpler. But as Leo's life changes, so too does the world.
I've read this is Hartley's best work and it is worthy of being reread (I expect I would see far more on another go around or two), but I'm still curious to read more. My library has several of his other novels and I have Simonetta Perkins on hand. The Go-Between is highly recommended and is almost assured a spot on my top ten reads list at the end of the year!