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Rating: 
Summary: Totally convincing
Review: A tale of innocence betrayed, in which a school boy is used as go-between in an affair between the lady he worships and a farmer. A vivid picture of Edwardian England, in which the natural ebullience, complacency and optimism of the age give way to emotional defeat for all concerned. Also a good movie, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful in imagery and emotion it is adolescence revisited.
Review: Every time this book is read, another aspect comes into view. Written in the context of a middle aged man finding old letters and a diary in his attic, it quickly becomes clear that this man is a batchelor who has lead an emotionally shallow life. He is Leo, a boy of 12, invited to spend his summer school break with a more affluent friend and finds himself taken into a world where there are no longer any rules or structures to support him. In the chaos that he triggers he tries to find order in amongst his world and the results in doing so are catastrophic to him and the people around him. Imagery is strong, and wonderfully intertwined between the lines. Hartley's skill lets us see the characters through the eyes of a boy, standing on the precipice of adulthood and yet still living within a life of childhood fantasies where his world does make sense. He does not understand the machinations of the adults around him. Passion, deception and innocence are overlaid with stong imageries; the Zodiac, Leo is Mercury, messenger of the Gods, mercury also gauging the ever rising heat of the summer, and of those passions of the adults circling around him. Being Robin Hood in his suit of green to his Fair Maid Marian, but green also meaning innocence and naivety. Misunderstandings, the hero, disfigured, his face unable to reveal what his heart feels. The story pulls you through each humid emotion filled day to its climatic end. And at the end, what becomes of the characters, of those 'planets' circling around Leo and the virgin? Is she a calculating woman, ruthless and insensitive to the feelings of a 12 year old boy, or should a woman never be blamed for what happens? Is Leo the author of his own misfortune, despite his age? What is the use of blame? Arguably the last chapter, may be a dissapointment to some readers, for perhaps it reveals too much. There are no questions left unanswered for us afterwards. The mystery is gone. Perhaps that is what Hartley was trying to achieve.
Rating:
Summary: Rich and evocative
Review: I first read The Go-Between in my English class in my last year of high school. Returning to the book some 20 years later, I found it an even richer text than I did as a schoolboy.The author's use of the older Leo's retrospective narrative provides flexibility to alter recollections and timelines in a way that allows him to introduce symbolism to the text - the heat as a guage of the sexual relationship between Marion and Ted (he first notices its destructiveness at the moment he finds out of the true nature of their relationship by glancing at the unsealed letter) - the belladonna / deadly nightshade (even the two names provide contrasting meanings) as a symbol of Marion which he eventually destroys - phallic symbols such as the cricket bat and the gun for Ted (the latter which destroys him both physically and metaphorically). Hartley's text is also a critique on the 20th century. The story is placed in 1900 and the great hopes of Victorian/Edwardian Britian - the progress of science, the progress of human society and the height of Empire. The shattering of Leo's life and hopes evokes the reality of the 20th century West. Denys and Marcus are killed in WW1 and the 10th Vicount and Vicountess Trimington by WW2. The signs are there at the time of the illusion of this sense of progress for the new century, with the frequent references to the Boer War and the disfigurement of Trimington. There are some minor quibbles with the story. The emotional collapse of Leo seems disproportionate to what he saw - he may not have known what "spooning" was but he was aware of the intensity of Marion and Ted's relationship. However, it adds dramatic impact and does not detract from the brilliant integration of the text - its use of language, symbols and narrative patterns.
Rating: 
Summary: Good writing style: But, too mundane before the final climax
Review: It is July 1900. Leo Colston, 12, goes to stay at the family home of his school chum, Marcus Maudsley, during his summer holiday; is recruited by Marcus's elder sister, Marian (already engaged to marry Lord Hugh Trimingham) to act as a 'go-between' (i.e. unpaid postman) to walk covert letters between herself and a neighbouring farm tenant, Ted Burgess, so Marian can continue a secret relationship with Ted behind her fiancee's back, and, from there, the plot thickens... Actually, the one thing the plot fails to do, for the first 241 pages, is thicken very much. The plot is very humdrum and boring: events in a big house. Only in the last 40 pages does the book become very exciting. This 1950s book is strikingly similar in structure to Part I of Iain McEwan's later (2002) book 'Atonement' (which takes 170 pages rather than 240 pages to get interesting). This book is about growing up, childrens' perspectives on life, adult pretentiousness and dishonesty, the interplay between people, trust and betrayal and - particularly - about how major single incidents in our lives can be so formative because of their consequences and what they do to our minds in the long term. A book to be read? The first 240 pages are boring: acceptable to a 1950s reader, maybe, because of the absence of TV then, but probably not so acceptable now. The final 40 pages (=Chapter 22 and the Epilogue) are the gripping and clever climax that makes this novel interesting. The writer is clearly very talented in the actual art of writing (he worked as a fiction reviewer for 20 years between 1923 and 1943). This book won the Heinemann Foundation Prize of the Royal Society of Literature in 1954, and was made into a successful film later on. The writer was awarded a CBE in 1955.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to see why this book is still a classic!
Review: On the surface this is a story about a boy's unwitting involvement in facilitating a love affair at the turn of the century (1899 or so), told retrospectively by that boy as a man in his 60s.
On a deeper level one could say it's about our capacity for self-deception, or about the agonies of going from the intense and uncomplicated pleasures of childhood to the tortuous emotions of adulthood. But this makes the book sound detached and overly literary, which it's definitely not. It's involving and dramatic instead.
Hartley's commanding style makes this story extremely gripping; because it's told in retrospect the narrator is as articulate as an adult, yet the emotions expressed (and somehow the ones the reader feels) are the intense and confused ones of a child. Everything seems vivid and yet nothing is completely understandable, just as it is for us as children.
This lends the book a very bittersweet feeling and a magnificent aura of mystery. It's hard to imagine this book will ever go out of style.
Rating: 
Summary: A STUDENTS OPINION
Review: Out of all the books we had to study for my A-Level english literature class I am glad that we read this one . Before the course I had never heard of it before and as we found out we were going to study the text my whole class groaned inwardley , "Why couldn't we study something we already knew about , to give us a head start?" I had thought , No one dared think of the exam that could seal our fate but we knew we needed as much help as possible if we were to pass with a decent grade . So why study something we had never heard of? Why not read a novel by Shakespeare? at least we would have had a bit of background knoledge. So we started reading it and gradually we became aware that we were enjoying it , which was unusual ( students actually enjoying their work? It's quite unheard of ).My favourite charectar was Marian Maudsley , the ill-fated female of the love triangle . I could sympathise with her for not being able to publically love her sweetheart but it was so well written that I could also feel her harsh temper towards Leo as if I were him . The book has all the essential elements of a great novel: innocence, love , passion , deciet , lies and death. The plot in a few lines is that a young woman of high class (Marian) is having a passionate affair with a farmer (Ted Burgess), but is expected by her family and society to marry Lord Trimmingham .As Marian cannot be seen with Ted they use a young boy (Leo), who is staying with her younger brother , as a 'Postman' between them and he passes their messages . The author uses double narrative , the young Leo's actions told by the older Leo , and it shows us how it has effected his life . I really liked this book and can understand why it is so popular for general reading and as an A-Level text .I recommend it for people of all ages , even the people who like me tend to stick to books by authors they already know , it's nice to have a little variety .
Rating:
Summary: Deeply psychological novel
Review: Reminiscent of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, THE GO-BETWEEN is a very similar coming of age tale. Two young school friends spend a summer together, and one of the two carries love notes between two young lovers. Ultimately this leads to a tragic suicide. Fans of psychological literary fiction, and such authors as Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, etc., will greatly enjoy this story.
Rating:
Summary: Wistful, chaste, and utterly captivating.
Review: Resembling both McEwan's Atonement and Frayn's Spies in its plot, this 1953 novel, recently reprinted, tells of a pre-adolescent's naive meddling in the love lives of elders, with disastrous results. Set in the summer of 1900, when the hopes and dreams for the century were as yet untarnished by two world wars and subsequent horrors, this novel is quietly elegant in style, its emotional upheavals restrained, and its 12-year-old main character, Leo Colston, so earnest, hopeful, and curious about life that the reader cannot help but be moved by his innocence. Leo's summer visit to a friend at Brandham Hall introduces him to the landed gentry, the privileges they have assumed, and the strict social behaviors which guide their everyday lives. Bored and wanting to be helpful when his friend falls ill, Leo agrees to be a messenger carrying letters between Marian, his host's sister, and Ted Burgess, her secret love, a farmer living nearby. Catastrophe is inevitable--and devastating to Leo. In descriptive and nuanced prose, Hartley evokes the heat of summer and the emotional conflicts it heightens, the intensity rising along with the temperature. Magic spells, creatures of the zodiac, and mythology create an overlay of (chaste) paganism for Leo's perceptions, while widening the scope of Hartley's focus and providing innumerable parallels and symbols for the reader. The emotional impact of the climax is tremendous, heightened by the author's use of three perspectives--Leo Colston as a man in his 60's, permanently damaged by events when he was 12; Leo as a 12-year-old, wrestling with new issues of class, social obligation, friendship, morality, and love, while inadvertently causing a disaster; and the reader himself, for whom hindsight and knowledge of history create powerful ironies as he views these events and the way of life they represent. Some readers have commented on Leo's unrealistic innocence in matters of sex, even as a 12-year-old, but this may be a function of age. For those of us who can remember life without TV and the computer, it is not so far-fetched to imagine a life in which "mass communication" meant the telegraph and in which "spooning" was an adults-only secret!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: Thanks to the prior reviewers who brought to my attention a novel and author I'd never heard of before. This runs circles around so many contemporary novels, it should be required reading for lovers of modern fiction. My only slight criticism is that the sixty-three year old narrator at times seems to invest too much insight, understanding, perception, and wisdom into his voice as a young boy. Otherwise, it's a near-perfect novel.
Rating:
Summary: The past is a foreign country...
Review: This book is striking as a counterpoint to Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece "Brideshead Revisited". Both were written immediately after WW2, when Englishmen, exhausted, quite reasonably gazed back at a lost time of grace and innocence. Both Hartley and Waugh saw the falseness of that innocence, but also its deeper truth. Hartley's story is worth reading now, at the beginning of this century, for he places it at the dawn of the last one. Leo, his protagonist, is 12 years old. He has huge dreams for the century that is breaking on him. His faith contrasts with the bitter weariness of his older self, the alternative narrator, who in 1950 lays out this story from his memory, prompted by the discovery of a childhood diary. "Has the 20th Century done so much better than I have?" the narrator chides the memory of his childhood self. "You were vanquished, and so was your century, your precious century that you hoped so much of." 1900 was the last hot summer of Victoria's England. Leo, the only child of a widowed mother, goes to stay with a much wealthier schoolfriend. He sees nothing but the glories of the Maudsley family and their special guest, the Boer war-scarred young nobleman Viscount Trimingham. He becomes enraptured in his friend's sister, the ethereal Marian, for whom he would happily die. In an emotional sense, he will. Marian is kind to Leo. She also uses him. How much her affection was false, how much was genuine, lies at the core of Leo's agony. The boy acts as a go-between in Marian's illicit love for a tenant farmer, a man of physical force, a creation worthy of DH Lawrence. Leo learns that adults are not what they seem. And he takes it hard. It is possible to quibble with this story. It stretches credulity that even a century ago, a boy on the brink of puberty could be quite so naive - or that the loss of innocence should bring so complete an emotional collapse. The young Leo seems too vulnerable, the older one, too stifled. What holds it, though, is the beauty of the writing, the evocation of a lost age - both the age of boyhood and the age when Class, with its immutable threads, bound every English soul to its own orbit. Two world wars, for better or worse, blew such certainties apart. The story lives up to the mystery and the promise of its rightly famous opening line, the haunting and teasing truth: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
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