Questions About The Go-Between

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Answered Questions (3)

Does anyone know if this book influenced McEwan in his writing of Atonement?

Ben From his interview for Penguin's "Five Books That Shaped Me":

I was 14 when I discovered The Go-Between by LP Harley (1953). It’s about a boy from a lo…moreFrom his interview for Penguin's "Five Books That Shaped Me":

I was 14 when I discovered The Go-Between by LP Harley (1953). It’s about a boy from a lower-middle-class background who goes to a boarding school where most of the kids come from grand aristocratic families. He is invited to spend a summer in a big house where he is somewhat out of his depth, and becomes the go-between for two lovers, a young woman and a man of a lower social status.

At one point in the story, the protagonist Leo sees a copy of Punch magazine from July 1900 and notices the figure on the front, Mr Punch, is mopping his brow with a handkerchief. I just so happened to be reading this alone in a very beautiful library, and on the far wall were all the bound copies of Punch. So I took down this huge volume, turned to July 1900, and there was Punch mopping his brow. I was electrified by that: the way you can wrap a fictional story around real events and real things and give it a vivid quality it would not otherwise have. I fell in love with fiction in a much more passionate way, and although I did nothing about it at first, in that moment I think I became a writer. Later, The Go-Between would shape Atonement - it was an act of homage in some ways.

Link: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20....(less)

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There is an image, just after the climax at the end of chapter 23. '...and a shadow on the wall that opened and closed like an umbrella.' (The second last sentence of the chapter.) Would anyone like to offer opinions on what this might symbolize? It seems quite a specific and stark image, all the more considering what has come just before.