Book description
In his delicate and perceptive study of early adolescence L. P. Hartley evokes a young boy’s traumatic initiation into the adult world of passion, deception and hypocrisy.
A man in his sixties looks back on his byhood for the first time in fifty years, recalling events that took place on a summer visit to a Norfolk country house at the turn of the century. Cautiously he unearths painful memories that have been "buried for all these years, but they were there, I knew, the more complete, the more unforgettable for being carefully embalmed…"
It is the story of the loss of innocence, a loss so shattering and profound that it breeds a lasting mistrust of life.
