This is the story of a boy who inadvertently becomes a pivotal figure in an illicit and fateful relationship. The narrator of the novel, Leo Colston, now an elderly man, recalls the hot summer of 1900, when he found himself at Brandham Hall, the country estate of the Montague family, a guest of Marcus.

The dreamy and romantic Leo may be clever, but he is entirely oblivious to the world of adults. He is instantly captivated by the wit and beauty of Marian, the older sister of his classmate, who shows him a particular interest from the very beginning. Marian's wealthy parents plan to marry her off to the legal owner of Brandham Hall, Lord Trimingham. However, although Marian has consented to this marriage, she is secretly living a forbidden love with a socially inferior farmer.

The unsuspecting Leo is persuaded to become the messenger of letters and messages between them, thus getting caught up in a scandal that will not only destroy his innocence but will also mark his entire subsequent life. A timeless masterpiece of twentieth-century Anglophone literature.

“The famous opening line about the past sets the tone for this strange, beautiful book. I first read it in my adolescence, but the atmosphere of childlike innocence and nostalgia for the past that it uniquely conveys has never faded from my memory.” Ian McEwan

“L.P. Hartley, like Henry James, his most obvious literary forebear, explores with lucidity the subtle shades of morality, focusing on his characters, and especially on Leo, the narrator of The Go-Between, who is caught between the instincts of his nature and the social conventions that threaten to stifle them.” The New York Times

“Love, the confusion of adolescence, the allure of the forbidden – our emotions rise along with the mercury in this story of two illicit lovers from different social classes, as we witness it through the eyes of a boy, set against the backdrop of an unbearably hot English summer.” The Daily Telegraph