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The Go-Between

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The Go-Between

By: L. P. Hartley
Narrated by: Sean Barrett
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About this listen

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

Haunting, moving, evocative, The Go-Between is L. P. Hartley's heartbreaking novel about social constraints and childhood innocence.

During the long, hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk. There he falls in love with his friend's older sister, who commissions him to ferry secret messages to the local farmer, her lover. His naiveté sustains their affair until ultimately leading to an event that will change their lives irrevocably.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1953 L.P. Hartley (P)2016 Naxos AudioBooks Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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There's something very magnetic about this story. An illicit love affair seen through the eyes of a boy who understands things through his boyish code of morals. The descriptions of events, which take place over a few weeks in a grand house one hot summer, are very easy to slip into. The story is both shocking and beautiful. Highly recommend.

A perfect reading of an excellent story!

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I read this book about 40 years as a teenager. I loved it then but was perhaps too young to register how exceptional it was. It is beautifully written, & is incredibly cohesive with few details, if any, that don’t dovetail into & layer & reinforce its overall archetypal themes, perhaps especially, that tricky one of remaining true to or successfully realising the ardent dreams one can have in childhood, in adolescence, in young adulthood, at the beginning of new things when all is potential & everything is full of promise. This story brings home the fragile nature of human potential & how easily it can be permanently shut down through trauma.
Of the many audible books I’ve listened to, this is outstandingly the one where the 1st person narrator was such a match with what he was narrating, fully did it justice & absolutely enhanced & the story & its plausibility - Sean Barrett was so convincing as the voice of the dried up older man delving back into his youth to unearth the cataclysmic event that ruptured his identity & caused him to put the lid on the subjective world of feelings & sensibilities. I am so impressed with this narration: great timing, & a very lovely if subtle quality in the voice that made Leo’s voice so authentic.
This book was an absolute treat: stirring, moving, thought-provoking

Fantastic narration

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Very competent but not outstanding narration.
A beguiling story of naivety and regret as old Leo reflects on young Leo becoming part of a menage a trois and a steadily evolving tragedy. The somewhat sudden ending and abrupt reversion to the retrospective view threw me at first but on reflection was a good way of portraying that foreign country where they did things differently.

One of those books that stays with you

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The gentle pace of the story that guides you in to an involved world of English life

The description of the times seen from through a young boy’s eyes

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Given the storyline, the performance was good. Pretty pedestrian plot and oh so jolly english schoolboy phrases and japery just made it tedious for me. The novel doesn’t seem to have survived well for a contemporary audience.

A little twee for me

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