📖 Book Nostalgia ~ The Go - Between by L P Hartley

I'm really privileged to read so many latest release books which are so current they haven't even hit the book store shelves that I forget about the books which have influenced my reading over the years.

So, welcome to my mid-month Book Nostalgia feature where I'm allowing myself the luxury of going back in time with some of my favourite reads.

Let's wallow in book memories...

Published 1953
Penguin Modern Classics
This edition 2004

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

When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society.

📖 My Thoughts..

There's something about that classic opening sentence that immediately takes me back to the long hot summer of 1976, when, after completing my English Literature A' Level exam, I was able to read something that wasn't Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton. Blue skies seem to stretch endlessly into my, then unknown, future and with the sound of my dad mowing the lawn, and my mum chatting to the next door neighbour, I settled down on my red sun lounger, with a can of Lilt and an Aztec bar, to read this classic story of forbidden love.

Thirteen year old Leo is staying with his school friend, Marcus when he develops a teenage crush on his friend's beautiful older sister. Wanting to please Marion, Leo becomes embroiled in the clandestine relationship which is developing between Marion and Ted Burgess, a local tenant farmer. Completely besotted by the beautiful and beguiling, Marion, Leo is unaware of the significance of the messages he is passing between Marion and Ted until it's too late. Looking back at this time in his youth, the much older Leo looks back at the events of the summer of 1900 and the devastating consequences of Marion and Ted's ill-fated love affair.

The Go-Between is a classic coming-of-age novel which evokes the languid summer of 1900 and the social and moral restrictions of the Edwardian era. I've read the story a couple of times since 1976 and although I can't recall seeing the 1971 film version which starred Julie Christie and Alan Bates, I did enjoy the 2015 remake starring Joanna Vanderham as Marion, Ben Batt as Ted, and Jack Hollington as young Leo.

About the Author

Leslie Poles Hartley was born in 1895 and educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. He is best known for Facial Justice, the Eustace and Hilda trilogy and The Go-Between, which won the Heinemann Foundation Prize in 1954 and whose opening sentence has become almost proverbial: 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.' He was appointed a CBE in 1955, having won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in addition to the Heinemann. He died in 1972.

(Source: publisher website)

📖 Book Nostalgia ~ Love Story by Erich Segal

  

I'm really privileged to read so many latest release books which are so current they haven't even hit the book store shelves that I forget about the books which have influenced my reading over the years.

So, welcome to my mid-month Book Nostalgia feature where I'm allowing myself the luxury of going back in time with some of my favourite reads.

Let's wallow in book memories...

1970 edition

Oliver Barrett IV went to Harvard and Jenny Cavilleri to Radcliffe. He was rich, she was poor. 

He was sporty, she played music.

But they fell in love

This is their story.

Love Story was originally adapted as a screen play and then picked up by Paramount Pictures. The author, Erich Segal was asked to write the play into a novel as a preview for the film, and so, Love Story, all 127 pages of it, was published to coincide with Valentine's Day in 1970. It became a publishing phenomenon spending 41 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. 

This book came to my notice when the movie, starring Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw, became a box office sensation. After its general release in the UK, I went to see the film with friends from school and my lasting memory is of sitting in a darkened cinema on a summer afternoon watching this tragic tale unfold. It is the first film that made me cry and the only film that I have watched twice back to back on the same afternoon, in the same cinema! It's also the first grown up book I bought for myself.

I was already familiar with Ryan O'Neal having been a teen fan of the American daytime drama Peyton Place in which O'Neal had a starring role but it was Love Story which catapulted this charismatic young actor into the hearts of millions. Safe to say Love Story remains one of the highest grossing films of all time.

Segal's original idea, became THE film of the early seventies, and the book, despite it's small size, has become a publishing giant and is definitely a case of less is more. The story which is simplicity itself is a classic tale of boy meets girl. They meet at college, fall in love, marry against the odds and just when they have struggled through hardships and are facing a more settled future, tragedy strikes at the very heart of the novel. The book has remained in print since the day it was published, and sadly, after a couple of house moves, I lost my original, well-thumbed copy but I quickly replaced it with a new copy in 1987. I've lost count of the amount of times I've read it and it remains one of my favourite stories of all time.

Classic, beautiful, timeless Love Story is the novel which led me, by the hand, into a lifelong love of romantic fiction.

What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? 

That she was beautiful. And brilliant. 

That she loved Mozart and Bach. 

And the Beatles.

And me.

Review ~ Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh

This edition 2017
Penguin Random House

Abigail’s Party is a classic pinnacle of British theatre, first performed in 1977 at Hampstead Theatre.

The play is the telling of two marriages spectacularly unravelling at an awkward neighbourhood drinks party.

This edition includes the original script, complete with a new introduction by Mike Leigh describing the play's unlikely genesis, how it came to be made and where he believes it fits within his oeuvre as one of the country's leading writers and directors.

What did I think..

I am old enough to remember first watching Abigail's Party when it was broadcast on the 1st November 1977 as BBC1's Play for Today. To be able to read a copy of the script, in this its 40th anniversary year, is a real treat.

It's rather different reading a script than a novel, and of course, that takes some getting used to but pretty soon you get the 'voice's' of the characters in your head and this social satire, so beautifully written, just flows along really well. For me, it helped enormously to still be able to hear the very talented Alison Steadman's voice as Beverley the iconic and rather sad character I remember so well from the television adaptation.

The five and a half page introduction by the playwright, Mike Leigh, really helps to put the play into context, and as he shares the background to Abigail's Party you get a real sense of the history of the time and of the values, idiosyncrasies and avid consumerism which was so prevalent during the early Thatcher years.

This tragi-comedy works works so well as a piece of literary history and if you remember watching the play on TV then I'm sure that you will enjoy reading this 40th Anniversary edition as much as I did.

Best Read With ..a cheese and pineapple savoury and a large glass of 1977 Beaujolais... 

About the Author

Mike Leigh OBE is an English writer and film and theatre director.

My Thanks to Josie at Penguin Random House for my copy of Abigail's Party

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