Reviews

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

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monazaneefer's review against another edition

Rating: ★★★★✩ (4 stars)
Read as: Kindle version

Starting with the negatives; the writing style. The symbolism had such a blatant self-awareness it was a bit eye-roll worthy. Moreover, there were several alludes to philosophy and religion that were arbitrarily inserted. It didn't even make much of a difference to the story, for the most part, that it felt unnecessary. And some of it contradicted Leo's other decisive thoughts without it coming across as an internal debate...so....yeah? It just felt like the writer collected all his insights and dumped it here and contrived it to fit. Most importantly, Leo's actual opinions on these were irritants. Plus, there were a few opinions here and there by Leo, and even Ted, that I thought were more apt for the 1950s (when it was written) than 1900 (when it was set). I'm not a fan of inserting contemporariness in historical context as it ruins the authenticity of the set time period.

As for the positives, I adored the actual story and adored Marian and Ted. Even though Marian and Ted's plot was the larger part of the story, learning about them from Leo's point of view made it limited, which is a bummer.

And am I glad this story, in essence, wasn't about Leo! He was a bit of a pest. Honorably loyal, but a pest. He was a fine narrator when he was narrating about other characters and I looked forward to these (especially about Marian and Ted), but not when he started talking about his spells, his philosophical opinions, etc. No, I don't care.

One element that was craftily done was Ted's suicide. If we never got that scene somewhere in the middle of the book, when Leo found him with the gun, the ending might have come out of nowhere. Ted, pensive and holding his gun, and later telling Leo that he was going to clean it really confused me too! I didn't know whether to believe him or not. That's when I realised the plot had a different undertone than I thought. I would've never expected suicide to be a plot device by the way the story had been going thus far. Sure, I expected a sad ending but not something like that. If this one scene wasn't there, I might have felt cheated by Ted's ultimate suicide. (Getting invested in characters for nothing hasn't sat well with me since Mill on the Floss -.-)

I want to know how my feelings would be after a reread, a long time from now. I think I picked this up when I was in the right mood for it. So I'm not quite sure if, had my mood been different, my feelings to this story would be any different...I'm sure I'd have still enjoyed it, but would it end up being one of those "ah, lovely books" but that just didn't hold the enrapture of a 5-star book? I do, however, think that this waver wouldn't exist between the first read and a reread had the book revolved around Marian and Ted, from their perspectives or from an omniscient one. And not through a restricted lens which we got. It would have really solidified my final thoughts. But we shall see.