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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
If Atonement and The Remains of the Day had a baby.
A 12 year-old boy finds himself facilitating an illicit but fateful love affair when he spends a summer at Brandham Hall amidst high society. The Go-Between is the witty, moving, lyrical, and even epic account of this schoolboy, now in his 60s, who only now feels ready to remember and commit to writing what occurred that summer of 1900.
Hartley almost perfectly captures the outlook and voice of a schoolboy, what he treasures and fears, and the logic that drives him. I was completely sold by this and found it utterly charming.
Read simply as a story it is fantastic, but it is also an incisive critique of late-Victorian society. Hartley also tackles some pretty major features of the human condition like - oh I don't know - love, guilt, betrayal, and the meaning of life, seemingly without breaking a sweat. This book has depths I know I have only begun to uncover. One among a very select few books I want to reread.
With thanks to Monty for the recommendation. This should absolutely be a modern classic in my opinion, and I'm sad and embarrassed not to have heard of it before now.
A 12 year-old boy finds himself facilitating an illicit but fateful love affair when he spends a summer at Brandham Hall amidst high society. The Go-Between is the witty, moving, lyrical, and even epic account of this schoolboy, now in his 60s, who only now feels ready to remember and commit to writing what occurred that summer of 1900.
Hartley almost perfectly captures the outlook and voice of a schoolboy, what he treasures and fears, and the logic that drives him. I was completely sold by this and found it utterly charming.
Read simply as a story it is fantastic, but it is also an incisive critique of late-Victorian society. Hartley also tackles some pretty major features of the human condition like - oh I don't know - love, guilt, betrayal, and the meaning of life, seemingly without breaking a sweat. This book has depths I know I have only begun to uncover. One among a very select few books I want to reread.
With thanks to Monty for the recommendation. This should absolutely be a modern classic in my opinion, and I'm sad and embarrassed not to have heard of it before now.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
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"My attitude to the diary was twofold and contradictory: I was intensely proud of it and wanted everybody to see it and what I had written in it, and at the same time I had an instinct for secrecy and wanted nobody to see it."
" ... in my experience most people mind being laughed at more than anything else. What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably, but the fear of losing face?"
" 'No,' I thought, growing more rebellious, 'life has its own laws, and it is for me to defend myself against whatever comes along, without going snivelling to God about sin, my own or other people's.' How would it profit a man, if he got into a tight place, to call the people who put him there miserable sinners? Or himself a miserable sinner? I disliked the levelling aspect of this sinnerdom; it was like a cricket match played in a drizzle, where everyone had an excuse--and what a dull excuse!--for playing badly."
"Something of the sadness of human life came through to me, its indifference to our wishes, even to the wish that calamity should be more colorful than it is."
" ... the idea of Right and Wrong as two gigantic eavesdroppers spying on my movements was most distasteful to me."
" ... in my experience most people mind being laughed at more than anything else. What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably, but the fear of losing face?"
" 'No,' I thought, growing more rebellious, 'life has its own laws, and it is for me to defend myself against whatever comes along, without going snivelling to God about sin, my own or other people's.' How would it profit a man, if he got into a tight place, to call the people who put him there miserable sinners? Or himself a miserable sinner? I disliked the levelling aspect of this sinnerdom; it was like a cricket match played in a drizzle, where everyone had an excuse--and what a dull excuse!--for playing badly."
"Something of the sadness of human life came through to me, its indifference to our wishes, even to the wish that calamity should be more colorful than it is."
" ... the idea of Right and Wrong as two gigantic eavesdroppers spying on my movements was most distasteful to me."
"My attitude to the diary was twofold and contradictory: I was intensely proud of it and wanted everybody to see it and what I had written in it, and at the same time I had an instinct for secrecy and wanted nobody to see it."
" ... in my experience most people mind being laughed at more than anything else. What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably, but the fear of losing face?"
" 'No,' I thought, growing more rebellious, 'life has its own laws, and it is for me to defend myself against whatever comes along, without going snivelling to God about sin, my own or other people's.' How would it profit a man, if he got into a tight place, to call the people who put him there miserable sinners? Or himself a miserable sinner? I disliked the levelling aspect of this sinnerdom; it was like a cricket match played in a drizzle, where everyone had an excuse--and what a dull excuse!--for playing badly."
"Something of the sadness of human life came through to me, its indifference to our wishes, even to the wish that calamity should be more colorful than it is."
" ... the idea of Right and Wrong as two gigantic eavesdroppers spying on my movements was most distasteful to me."
" ... in my experience most people mind being laughed at more than anything else. What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably, but the fear of losing face?"
" 'No,' I thought, growing more rebellious, 'life has its own laws, and it is for me to defend myself against whatever comes along, without going snivelling to God about sin, my own or other people's.' How would it profit a man, if he got into a tight place, to call the people who put him there miserable sinners? Or himself a miserable sinner? I disliked the levelling aspect of this sinnerdom; it was like a cricket match played in a drizzle, where everyone had an excuse--and what a dull excuse!--for playing badly."
"Something of the sadness of human life came through to me, its indifference to our wishes, even to the wish that calamity should be more colorful than it is."
" ... the idea of Right and Wrong as two gigantic eavesdroppers spying on my movements was most distasteful to me."
God, this was so good—the narration is a perfect balance between childhood naïvete and adult wisdom, and not a single element is wasted or underutilized. Just a perfectly constructed sort of novel.
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes