The Go-Between past that continues to exist in and to control the subconscious … This doubling of consciousness and of narrative voice—the innocent twelve-year-old's emerging from beneath the self-protective sixty-five-year-old's—is one of Hartley's most effective techniques.” Another preoccupation in Tóibín's introduction was how far the story of “The Go-Between” is based on fact, in the wake of Adrian Wright’s biographical study, "Foreign Country: The Life of L. P. Hartley". Although Leo is twelve at the time of the novel – the long, hot summer of 1900 – the five-year-old Hartley remembered that time afterwards as "a Golden Age". When he was about
The Philosopher's Stone (novel) Stone" is a story that is a teaching; but it is also a teaching that is a story. It remains one of Colin Wilson's best novels to date." In his 1982 book "The Novels of Colin Wilson", Nicolas Tredell also made comparisons to "The Mind Parasites", and wrote that ""The Philosopher's Stone" is a much more substantial and, in some ways, more satisfactory novel". He criticized the second part of the novel: "With two higher men on his hands, and a lot of the novel still to go, Wilson tries to show them in action. He runs into difficulties, however.