The Go-Between

The Go-Between is a novel by L. P. Hartley (1895–1972), published in London in 1953. The novel begins with the line "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." The story begins with the reminiscences of Leo Colston, an elderly man looking back on his childhood with nostalgia. Leo, in his mid-sixties, is looking through his old things. He chances upon a battered old red collar box. In it he finds a diary from 1900, the year of his thirteenth birthday. He slowly pieces together his memory as he looks through the diary. Impressed by the astrological emblems at the front of the book, young Leo combines them in his mind with the idea that he is living at the turn of the 20th century. The importance of his boarding...