Penguin Readers, level 4 : The Go-Between

In the summer of 1900, Leo stays with his friend, Marcus. He finds himself falling in love with Marcus's beautiful older sister and, in consequence, agrees to become the "go-between" for her and the local farmer - a relationship that her parents know nothing about. This secret leads to trouble and by the end of the holiday Leo's childhood is over.

"An intelligent, complex and beautifully felt evocation of nascent boyhood sexuality that is also a searching exploration of the nature of memory and myth" --Douglas Brooks-Davies

An invitation to a friend's house changes an adolescent boy's life. Discovering an old diary, Leo, now in his sixties, is drawn back to the hot summer of 1900 and his visit to Brandham Hall. The past comes to life as Leo recalls the events and devastating outcome that destroyed his beliefs and future hopes.

The first annotated edition of L.P. Hartley's great classic, the present text generally follows that of the first edition of 1953 and also includes a number of small but significant corrections based on the surviving holograph of The Go-Between.

Lord David Cecil described L.P. Hartley as "One of the most distinguished of modern novelists; and one of the most original. For the world of his creation is composed of such diverse elements. On the one hand he is a keen and accurate observer of the processes of human thought and feeling; he is also a sharp-eyed chronicler of the social scene. But his picture of both is transformed by the light of a Gothic imagination that reveals itself now in a fanciful reverie, now in the mingled dark and gleam of a mysterious light and a mysterious darkness.... Such is the vision of light presented in[his] novels.