L P Hartley

 

I've just finished L P Hartley's The Go-Between -- and wow, this is an exceptional novel.

First, Hartley was a first-class stylist: this novel is perfectly crafted. Sentence by sentence, page by page: the book unfolds with enviable symmetry. The narration is steady, precise, and knowing. It would be hard to imagine a more fitting structure.

But more than that: this is novel that builds with emotional intensity; this is a book that thrives on plot, action, and character. This is not a novel lurking in the ether, focused only on ideas. Instead, it is one with ideas in mind, but which is fueled by the interactions between people: their dialogue, their sensitivities, their missteps. 

For a book about a child (and a child of the British elite, at that), it is one which is terribly brutal in the end: what Leo Colston experiences that summer of 1900 would be traumatic under any lens; but to return to the site of the trauma decades later adds a further layer to the emotional quality of the novel. 

I must say that I found The Go-Between to be refreshing in any number of ways: not least, its grounding in literary tradition. I enjoyed the slow gathering of forces, the confrontation, the culmination and decline. I found all of this to be as a novel should: this was not a book in search of philosophical concepts; nor was it one in which the narrator served as a foil for the author. No, this is just a great literary accomplishment full of pathos, tears, and recognition. Layer memory on top of that you have something truly lasting.