Episode 248: The Go-Between

Was waiting in the Library to get my money from Rahul, so I ended up reading L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between. If he'd come an hour later, I might have actually finished it while I was in the Library. In any case, I've just finished reading it, before heading to Varsity. Truly a masterful work. I can still remember reading the opening passages when I was back in JC, in the middle of a paper, and just being struck by the phrases. How can you not like a book that begins with the line, 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.' This is the first time in a really long while that I've managed to finish reading an entire book in less than one day. I vaguely recall having begun on The Go-Between years ago, but never finishing, so the experience of reading it today was, in a way, quite evocative. There's part of me that really responds to Leo's character, although I don't think I was quite that naïve at 13. He reminds me of Briony from Ian McEwan's Atonement, although the consequences of his actions are less disastrous. I admit that the 'climax' of The Go-Between is, frankly, rather anti-climactic. It literally is glossed over in less than a page, and that seems to me what is most problematic about the novel for me. Nevertheless, it's been a joy to read something for pleasure and not for work!