Reviews - Go-Between | The StoryGraph

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380 reviews for:

Go-Between

L.P. Hartley

3.98 AVERAGE

vigilantesupreme's review against another edition

5.0

emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

jamieterv's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

If you wanted to like Remains of the Day but were bored to tears by the milquetoast, stodgy upper-crust sexual tension of Mr. Stevens and Miss Kenton, then this one is for you. It carries that same sense of nostalgia and regret, but with more raw emotion and a protagonist who doesn’t just suppress his feelings. He gets completely blindsided by them. Is there some homoerotic subtext? I suppose if you want it. Otherwise, not really. Either way, it’s a fascinating look at how memory warps the past, making you forever a visitor, never fully understanding what you lived through. Haunting, beautifully written, and surprisingly gripping for a novel about childhood, class, and secrets too big for one boy to carry.

apmreads's review against another edition

I could not, for the life of me, get into the story.

suzandeniz's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

stormydawnc's review against another edition

5.0

The Go-Between: or, in which being forced to read a book for a class was a good thing. This is such an underrated book and I consistently shove it on my friends when they want to read classics.

njxml195's review against another edition

5.0

emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

michaelontheplanet's review against another edition

4.0

To serve them all my gays: superior school holiday adventures among the landed gentry of East Anglia, when boarding schoolboy Leo stays with his friend’s people and ends up as message-bearer for an illicit love affair between the farm hand and the aristocrat’s fiancée. Proust meets Jennings with a bit of DH Lollipop flung in for good measure. Hartley is superb at capturing the fevered goings-on of the pubescent boy’s mind - fear of not fitting in, looking odd, being thought a sissy. Just as one of the schoolmasters in Buckeridge’s Linbury Court is perplexed by the workings of the young mind - “the things boys said and the things boys did seemed incredible to a grown up of his way of thinking”, so Hartley is pretty clear: the over-thinking of an active imagination coupled with a half-understanding of adult mores proves fatal. But what The Go-Between is really noteworthy for is exposing just how much the uppers despise the likes of us, the ordinary people, who smell and talk different - part of a long lineage of rich people’s disdain that stretches from Tom Brown’s Schooldays to Jacob Rees Mogg referring to them as “stains”. Unless of course, rather like poor old Marian, they just happen to find them hot. A pot very effectively boiled with hypocrisy, snobbery and deception, and a fitting epitaph for the age of the old queen.

janeta12's review against another edition

4.0

4.5 really enjoyed this one, interesting characters, getting engrossed in the settings and the time - the school, Brandham Hall, cricket, the farm, deadly nightshade...