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 Takeover (novel) role of religion (represented by Hubert's bogus Diana cult and two indolent, chortling Catholic priests) and the role of money: mostly unseen, or buried. A larger-scale backdrop is provided by the 1973 oil crisis. Hubert's secretary, Pauline Thin, shares her surname with the Edinburgh-based stationer James Thin, who supplied Spark's notebooks in which she wrote all her novels in longhand. The Takeover (novel) The Takeover is a novel by the Scottish author Muriel Spark. It was first published in 1976. It is set in Nemi, Italy between 1973 and 1975. The author had moved to Italy as a permanent resident