The Go-Between: an opening that makes time feel distant
The Go-Between begins with a sentence by LP Hartley: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." BBC Culture's discussion of first lines places this opening among sweeping statements, alongside examples by Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen. That is a useful starting point for reading it. Before any particular incident enters the conversation, the sentence offers a way of approaching time. The past becomes somewhere with different habits. For me, the attraction lies in that shift from something apparently familiar to something that asks for patience, attention and a willingness to encounter difference.
Consider the sentence in parts. Its opening names the past, while its second half gives that past inhabitants and practices. The colon is a hinge between the comparison and its explanation. A country alone might suggest distance; people doing things differently add another kind of separation. This is a reading of the words on the page, rather than a claim about the novel's later events. The wording permits a pause over both halves. It can be heard as a broad observation, but also as an invitation to approach remembered experience with the curiosity normally reserved for an unfamiliar place.
BBC Culture describes the beginning of The Go-Between as carrying a plaintive quality that continues to resonate well over half a century later. That assessment fits the sentence's combination of clarity and distance. The words are easy to follow, yet the comparison leaves room for feeling. I find the effect more reflective than argumentative: the line offers an image without demanding an immediate verdict. There is no need to supply a particular journey or a personal memory to appreciate its shape. The contrast between past and present is already there in the distinction between here and the differently conducted life of there.
The comparison with Tolstoy helps distinguish this approach. Anna Karenina begins by contrasting happy families with the different forms of unhappy families. Both openings make broad statements before asking us to attend to a particular story. Their emphasis differs, however: Tolstoy's sentence concerns families, while Hartley's concerns the distance created by time. BBC Culture also discusses the ironic opening of Pride and Prejudice, with its statement about a single man possessing a fortune and wanting a wife. These examples offer different pleasures within the same broad approach. A sweeping beginning can sound reflective, categorical or knowingly ironic, depending on its language.
The Go-Between belongs to a discussion that also considers much more direct beginnings. Ralph Ellison opens The Invisible Man with a declaration of invisibility. Renata Adler begins Speedboat with a statement that nobody died that year. BBC Culture presents these as concise assertions that encourage further reading. Set beside them, Hartley's opening feels less like an immediate report and more like a frame for interpretation. That distinction is a matter of emphasis, not a ranking. One beginning can prompt a question about what happened; another can suggest how to regard what follows. Both leave space for a reader's curiosity to develop.
The discussion also gives mood an important place. Sylvia Plath's opening to The Bell Jar establishes time, place and mood together, while Annie Proulx's description of dreary upstate towns demonstrates the force of atmosphere. Hartley's comparison invites a similarly attentive reading without requiring a detailed setting in the sentence itself. The foreign country image can feel wistful because it places earlier experience at a distance. That is an interpretation of its language, rather than an additional fact about its author. It offers a way to notice tone while staying with the small amount of material an opening gives us.
Reading The Go-Between's first sentence in this company also brings a useful caution. BBC Culture argues that the chief function of a first sentence is to encourage us to read on, and that some celebrated beginnings gain much of their force from what follows. The article offers Jane Eyre and Rebecca as examples of openings enriched by later reading. Hartley's line can be admired on its own, but that broader point makes isolated admiration feel like a beginning in itself. A memorable sentence can open a door. It need not carry every judgment that might eventually be made about the book.
The answer to the attribution question is LP Hartley, and the book is The Go-Between. Beyond that pairing, the pleasure is in seeing how the sentence works: a sweeping statement, a comparison and an explanation, all directing attention toward difference across time. The BBC discussion allows the opening to sit beside several other approaches without reducing them to a single formula. I would keep that variety in view when returning to the line. Its appeal can rest in the precision of its image and in the reflective mood it creates, while the rest of the novel remains an invitation to continue reading.