The Go-Between, by L.P. Hartley

[Trevor]

The Go-Between



Publication Date: March 31, 2002
Pages: 344
Introduction by Colm Tóibín.
Originally published in 1953.

“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, naïveté 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.

[Lobstergirl]

This was pretty good. It seemed to be following very much in the footsteps of E.M. Forster. It's interesting how the first sentence is so much more famous than the book itself. Seems like everyone can quote that sentence, but not everyone knows the source of it.