Failed Attempt: the Foreign Country of Adolescence in The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

Numbered in the compulsory reading lists, L.P. Hartley’s famous The Go-Between (1953) seems a novel predestined to become a subject of a discussion on relational teaching. The wide acclaim of both the novel and the film may be a proof of its timeless topicality. The present article offers an analysis of the literary rendering of the process of maturation and the meaning of interpersonal relations in adolescence. Next to school environment, private sphere and peer group are scrutinized in terms of the exposure of failed communication processes.