A review by ditten
The Charioteer by Mary Renault

challenging emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

~THE CHARIOTEER by Mary Renault is a beautiful, complex, queer must-read!~
 
Cat Sebastian's We Could Be So Good is why I bought this book and I'm so glad I did because I ended up LOVING The Charioteer. I had the best time reading and analysing the book with Cody.
 
The Charioteer is a queer 1953 novel set during WWII. It's one of the first queer books with a happy ending which in itself makes it a key part of queer literary history, but it's also an incredible book in itself. It's about Laurie who was wounded at Dunkirk and who's recovering at a hospital in England. Laurie soon finds himself in a love triangle where he's struggling to choose between two very different men and the lives they represent. 
 
This book was just. Wow! Unlike any I've read before and it's left me completely unmoored. The Charioteer is a book written in subtext, ellipses, and between the words on the page. Its usually more about what's left unsaid than what's said. It's such a fascinating, but complicated, book to read. 
 
And Laurie? That meme of a dog in a burning room, ignoring the roaring fire, going "it's fine"? That's Laurie Odell, disaster gay, and love of my life who I frequently wanted to smack upside the head for being delulu. Laurie is one of the OG unreliable narrators. This man is on the struggle bus, he's often lying to himself and the reader just to cope which means you have to really pay attention when reading.
 
I don't usually like love triangles, but I didn't mind it in this book. It both uses the common idea and tropes of a love triangle but it's so much more than that, too!
 
The Charioteer is about queer love, truth, deceit, betrayal, and self-acceptance. It's about society's ideals and norms in a time where being queer was illegal and viewed as obscene, and how that affects and influences a queer man's ideas of himself, the world, and the queer community. 
 
Authors who're fans of Renault and/or whose work contains parallels or references to Renault's writing include C.S. Pacat, Alexis Hall, Alice Winn, and of course Cat Sebastian.