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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
Notes on a reread: This is absolutely one of the best books I've read. So much is revealed by paying attention and thinking about what is going on off-page. 5* every day.
Don't understand why I didn't leave a review the first time, unless I was too busy climbing the walls. Don't understand why I haven't reread this every December ever since.
(Apologies to anyone who has a million notifications about this, Goodreads and I were having a fight about editions. I appear to have won)
(No apologies to anyone getting my insane ramblings, you know who you are, and you deserve it because of what you did (picking Andrew))
Don't understand why I didn't leave a review the first time, unless I was too busy climbing the walls. Don't understand why I haven't reread this every December ever since.
(Apologies to anyone who has a million notifications about this, Goodreads and I were having a fight about editions. I appear to have won)
(No apologies to anyone getting my insane ramblings, you know who you are, and you deserve it because of what you did (picking Andrew))
Of course this is a 5⭐. It's really interesting to see what was changed between the editions. So many things get cut to make the '59 one, and sometimes you can't even see why. Several entire scenes from the first half! Little bits of editing throughout. Fascinating choices being made.
2.5 stars. Nothing like a long haul flight to force one to finish a book. The writing was good of course but the story just d r a g g e d.
wow is this good. one of her strongest books. i'm going to need a re-read probably sooner than later, to assimilate the whole thing more fully. this book is emotionally rich, detailed, historically interesting, and crafted with very intense character-building. incredible. and, as ever, her language is simply gorgeous.
emotional
reflective
medium-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
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
~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.
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Brb, unpacking all of the symbolism of a festering wound for the next 3-5 business days.
Man, this book wrecked me. It wouldn't be a Renault book without me begging for a 200 page epilogue and wishing for a line-by-line explanation from the author herself. The surface-level detail is so sparse that you cling to it and the story forces you to dig deeper because you need to know exactly why these characters made these decisions.
And the characters are so imperfect and flawed that 90% of the time you're feeling unmoored and wishing they just said something different or they acted in a slightly different manner.
Reading about wartime masculinity is good fun though - half of the time you're like 'oh I wonder what this character is feeling/thinking', but the best part is that they're repressing so much, that they don't even know! So when they say something extra hurtful in a fight, it's a surprise to them too! And this is why Laurie is such a fascinating narrator. He's oblivious, yes, but he wilfully refuses to recognise truths about himself and others.
The parallels between the couples is just so painful. Renault plays with your allegiances so well that it's only at the end of the book that you can see the full picture and what and who the book was always about.
Need to read this a few more times. I bought the unedited 1953 version which contains a bit more detail and I will cling to those missing sentences with all of my strength.
Altogether: significantly less dense than Renault's Greek works (though that may partially be because you're not trying to remember the ins and outs of the Macedonian army ranks), beautifully written. Renault would 100% be a classic author if it weren't for being a queer woman writing about the gays and all that.
(Also recommending the audiobook!)
Man, this book wrecked me. It wouldn't be a Renault book without me begging for a 200 page epilogue and wishing for a line-by-line explanation from the author herself. The surface-level detail is so sparse that you cling to it and the story forces you to dig deeper because you need to know exactly why these characters made these decisions.
And the characters are so imperfect and flawed that 90% of the time you're feeling unmoored and wishing they just said something different or they acted in a slightly different manner.
Reading about wartime masculinity is good fun though - half of the time you're like 'oh I wonder what this character is feeling/thinking', but the best part is that they're repressing so much, that they don't even know! So when they say something extra hurtful in a fight, it's a surprise to them too! And this is why Laurie is such a fascinating narrator. He's oblivious, yes, but he wilfully refuses to recognise truths about himself and others.
The parallels between the couples is just so painful. Renault plays with your allegiances so well that it's only at the end of the book that you can see the full picture and what and who the book was always about.
Need to read this a few more times. I bought the unedited 1953 version which contains a bit more detail and I will cling to those missing sentences with all of my strength.
Altogether: significantly less dense than Renault's Greek works (though that may partially be because you're not trying to remember the ins and outs of the Macedonian army ranks), beautifully written. Renault would 100% be a classic author if it weren't for being a queer woman writing about the gays and all that.
(Also recommending the audiobook!)
What a marvellous story of an entangled codependency. Indeed, it is a well-written, sophisticated plot, but what impresses me the most are the level of details, referrals to the cultural codes and what has actually never been said and left to the interpretation of the reader. Exemplary illustration of the Roland Barthes’s death of the author idea.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes