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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
This book is so beautiful and such an emotional roller coaster but also so subtle I had to read things twice to fully appreciate how poignant they were. You could say that this book leaves you unsatisfied, but it more left me feeling emotionally wrung out. But it is such a stunning book and I stand by my choice of reading this gay Dunkirk love story over going to see Dunkirk the movie.
honestly so beautiful and good, this is a gay classic and I endorse it. many profound things to say about human life and relationships, said in the most oblique and incomprehensible ways. she gave me the fucking god damn runaround there at the end but it DOES have a happy ending! so read it. it's great.
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is really beautiful and made me cry super hard (for Overidentification Reasons mostly; I rarely cry at fiction otherwise because I'm self-centred like that). A possibly fair argument could be made for some homophobia (not a single femme gay man is portrayed flatteringly) but besides that I think it's a conscious choice to address Laurie's (+ other characters') internalised issues, which is all really painfully accurate. Anyway: gorgeous writing! Gay soldiers! I'm excited to read her Alexander books!
Ah, yes, The Charioteer. By the matchless Mary Renault, my love for whom cannot be expressed in strong enough terms, the author of Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, which I read as a kid and have never stopped loving. The Charioteer is one of her earlier novels, set more in modern times (World War II), at an army hospital as it happens.
Basically the main character, Laurie (called Spud because his last name’s Odell, bless him) is wounded at Dunkirk and falls madly in love with a conscientious objector who is an orderly at his army hospital. And their chaste romance continues apace, because Laurie nobly fears that he will ruin everything for innocent Andrew if he tells him about homosexuality. I am not a big fan of Andrew’s, to be honest, because he gets all noble and offended about everything, which makes me tired, and plus it crushes me when Laurie’s all tense and snappy due to unrequited love. So meanwhile he is reunited with this guy he admired when they were in school together, before the guy got expelled for being a big gay, and they get along gorgeously and Ralph is rather sweetly gallant. P.S. I like Ralph better than Andrew, and if I were Laurie, I’d be like, Huh, now with Ralph I have a future that contains good conversations, good sex, and no hiding shit, whereas with Andrew it’s just the good conversations and endless mental torture, and the decision would be easy, but Laurie spends a lot of time agonizing over it.
I can’t explain what makes this book so appealing to me. One thing is that they really do have good conversations. Mary Renault writes these beautiful dialogue sequences that are just impossibly eloquent with the things they’re saying and the things they’re not saying. I go green with envy reading it because I will never, ever be able to pack that much meaning and intensity into a line of dialogue, ever. And overall, it’s just such an understated and melancholy book, and I really do like Ralph an awful lot. He’s such a dear and he loves Laurie so much.
I will add this caveat: There’s a fair bit of unpleasantness with the more effeminate gay characters. They all have idiotic names like Bim and Toto and Bunny, and they are all gossipy bitchy people trying to screw up everyone else’s lives by telling lies and reading diaries and making half-assed manipulative suicide attempts. Not very nice in Mary Renault and not incredibly defensible even though she was writing about people that actually existed in a certain environment to which she had been recently, and to her detriment, exposed.
Basically the main character, Laurie (called Spud because his last name’s Odell, bless him) is wounded at Dunkirk and falls madly in love with a conscientious objector who is an orderly at his army hospital. And their chaste romance continues apace, because Laurie nobly fears that he will ruin everything for innocent Andrew if he tells him about homosexuality. I am not a big fan of Andrew’s, to be honest, because he gets all noble and offended about everything, which makes me tired, and plus it crushes me when Laurie’s all tense and snappy due to unrequited love. So meanwhile he is reunited with this guy he admired when they were in school together, before the guy got expelled for being a big gay, and they get along gorgeously and Ralph is rather sweetly gallant. P.S. I like Ralph better than Andrew, and if I were Laurie, I’d be like, Huh, now with Ralph I have a future that contains good conversations, good sex, and no hiding shit, whereas with Andrew it’s just the good conversations and endless mental torture, and the decision would be easy, but Laurie spends a lot of time agonizing over it.
I can’t explain what makes this book so appealing to me. One thing is that they really do have good conversations. Mary Renault writes these beautiful dialogue sequences that are just impossibly eloquent with the things they’re saying and the things they’re not saying. I go green with envy reading it because I will never, ever be able to pack that much meaning and intensity into a line of dialogue, ever. And overall, it’s just such an understated and melancholy book, and I really do like Ralph an awful lot. He’s such a dear and he loves Laurie so much.
I will add this caveat: There’s a fair bit of unpleasantness with the more effeminate gay characters. They all have idiotic names like Bim and Toto and Bunny, and they are all gossipy bitchy people trying to screw up everyone else’s lives by telling lies and reading diaries and making half-assed manipulative suicide attempts. Not very nice in Mary Renault and not incredibly defensible even though she was writing about people that actually existed in a certain environment to which she had been recently, and to her detriment, exposed.
2.5
〰️ in english after the french part 〰️
Déjà j'ai un peu eu du mal au début avec le niveau d'anglais et le style d'écriture. Ce roman a été à la base publié dans les années 50 et je n'ai pas l'habitude de lire des livres aussi vieux en anglais ( je lis que des contemporains ou presque donc bob). Je pense que ça a joué sur mon appréciation de l'histoire.
J'ai trouvé certains partis pris intéressants comme le fait qu'il y ait pas qu'un ou deux perso gay mais tout un petit groupe. J'ai aussi apprécié le fait qu'ils évoquent et mentionne la bisexualité à un moment.
Ah et ça fini tragiquement pour aucun des personnages ce qui est quand même appréciable également. Certaines relations d'amitiés qui se développent entre les perso sont aussi sympathiques.
Après niveau points négatifs, toute la première moitié m'a paru vraimennnnnt longue et je suis un peu ennuyée honnêtement. Au niveau des personnages en eux-même, je me suis attachée à aucun d'eux malgré le fait que le personnage principal ainsi que Ralph soient plutôt bien développés.
✖️🔅✖️
It was kinda difficult to read because i'm not used to read books that old in english so i had trouble with some figures of speech and vocabulary. I think that played a part of my enjoyment of this book.
There are some stuff I liked : the fact that there isn't just one or two gay characters but a whole little group, the mention of bisexuality. Also, nobody gets a tragic ending which is always nice. Some of the growing friendships were also enjoyable to read about.
Nevertheless, I thought the first half especially was quite boring. The main two characters I would say (Laurie and Ralph) were well developed but I didnt care that much for any of them.
I think this wasn't a book for me lol
〰️ in english after the french part 〰️
Déjà j'ai un peu eu du mal au début avec le niveau d'anglais et le style d'écriture. Ce roman a été à la base publié dans les années 50 et je n'ai pas l'habitude de lire des livres aussi vieux en anglais ( je lis que des contemporains ou presque donc bob). Je pense que ça a joué sur mon appréciation de l'histoire.
J'ai trouvé certains partis pris intéressants comme le fait qu'il y ait pas qu'un ou deux perso gay mais tout un petit groupe. J'ai aussi apprécié le fait qu'ils évoquent et mentionne la bisexualité à un moment.
Ah et ça fini tragiquement pour aucun des personnages ce qui est quand même appréciable également. Certaines relations d'amitiés qui se développent entre les perso sont aussi sympathiques.
Après niveau points négatifs, toute la première moitié m'a paru vraimennnnnt longue et je suis un peu ennuyée honnêtement. Au niveau des personnages en eux-même, je me suis attachée à aucun d'eux malgré le fait que le personnage principal ainsi que Ralph soient plutôt bien développés.
✖️🔅✖️
It was kinda difficult to read because i'm not used to read books that old in english so i had trouble with some figures of speech and vocabulary. I think that played a part of my enjoyment of this book.
There are some stuff I liked : the fact that there isn't just one or two gay characters but a whole little group, the mention of bisexuality. Also, nobody gets a tragic ending which is always nice. Some of the growing friendships were also enjoyable to read about.
Nevertheless, I thought the first half especially was quite boring. The main two characters I would say (Laurie and Ralph) were well developed but I didnt care that much for any of them.
I think this wasn't a book for me lol
This book was very, very wordy. Although I enjoyed the story and was happy to see an explicitly gay romance end happily (in a book published in 1953, no less), I found it difficult to keep focused when Laurie's thoughts wandered, often for paragraphs at a time. A lot was implied rather than outright stated in this book (as expected for the time of publishing) and this made following the narrative challenging at times. However, Renault's writing is very beautiful and almost breathtakingly relatable at times. I loved the character of Andrew and was also very intrigued by Alec and Bunny, in very different ways.
[[4 stars]]
Crossposted from my book blog where I post reviews, hauls, updates and reblog images of books.
Short Review: The Charioteer is a lovely book about the struggles that homosexuals went through - and continue to go through. Laurie Odell has to face the stigma of being a gay man in the 1940s, as well as the many problems that are faced with any relationship. This is a fantastic coming of age story told from a young gay man’s point of view, as he struggles to decide who he is, who he wants to be and who everyone else thinks he is.
Long review with SPOILERS: Ever since reading “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller (the review of which will be coming soon - I am unable to put “asdfghjkjhgfsa” into words right now), as well as coming to terms with my own sexuality, I’ve been much more interested in novels that are about gay characters - after all, the classic heterosexual stories are so over told aren’t they?
I found this book when I was searching for another of Mary Renault’s books in my local bookstore, and after reading the blurb above I decided that it would be worth the buy.
It has taken me a while to get through this book for various reasons, which I will discuss in due course, when I get to the negatives of this book - though I’ll say it here and now, there aren’t many!
Now this book starts off with Laurie Odell as a young boy, watching as his father packs and leaves Laurie and his mother. It then skips to his time at school where Ralph Lanyon is being thrown out of the school, and Laurie, having worshipped the man from afar, thinks about protesting. Ralph calls him to his office and tells him not to start a fuss, before handing Laurie a book.
It then skips to Laurie coming home from being injured at Dunkirk. His legs has been broken and after several surgeries he’s able to keep it, but it’s shorter than the other, making him walk with a limp. They design a special boot for him that seems like an insignificant little moment, but then proves to be an important factor in Laurie having to decide what he’s going to do with his life.
At first he meets Andrew, a young man not fighting in the war because of his personal beliefs. He has been sent to help the hospital and most of the patients don’t take to kindly to him, because of his avoidance of the war. Laurie meets him on his first day whilst he is cleaning the toilet, and saves him from the rudeness of one of the patients in Laurie’s ward.
The two strike up an unlikely friendship and Laurie, having known deep down that he was homosexual but too afraid to admit it, finally comes to terms with who he is, realising that he is also in love with Andrew. He knows that he cannot tell Andrew, not because Andrew is this “straight man” but because he doesn’t want to make the man he loves question his beliefs.
I personally love Laurie and Andrew together and no word of a lie, when I got to the end where Andrew moves away to London, after finding out about Laurie and Ralph through Bunny, Ralph’s ex-boyfriend, I was ready to call the book quits and not even see how it ended. But then I remembered that I only had a few pages left, so why should I finish it?
Now, Laurie and Ralph… that is a relationship I don’t like and I’m more than annoyed that of any of the potential relationships that had the possibility of becoming real, that it had to be this one.
Which brings me to describing Ralph Lanyon himself. He’s a couple of years older than Laurie (though I somehow got it into my head that he was several years older, maybe ten or such) and went to the same school with him. He reappears into the story when Laurie is out receiving physiotherapy for his knee and he bumps into someone on the bus, who invites him to a party which Ralph will be attending.
I will admit that I was biased when he first appeared - he wasn’t Andrew and I wanted Andrew and Laurie to get together, and here was a man that was just going to get in the way of that. However, I came to realise that my hatred for him was totally and completely… warranted.
The man is a controlling, manipulative douche who is portrayed as a strong, decisive man through Laurie’s eyes. Initially I thought I would warm up to him as Laurie continued to feel love and talk to Andrew, growing closer and closer to him, and I thought that maybe they would finally get together in spite of the man that Laurie had idolised since he was young.
I was wrong.
The second I read that he had manipulated his doctor friend into putting a request for Laurie’s transfer to a hospital closer to him, thus pulling him away from Andrew, I knew that I couldn’t trust him.
I feel that I should love and adore him the way Laurie does, but I can’t bring myself to. He brings an air of abusiveness to the book, something which I don’t normally like reading, and the fact his controlling nature is never challenged makes my blood boil.
He wants to control Laurie and in the end he succeeds.
Whilst it is Ralph’s ex that drives the final wedge between Laurie and Andrew, he doesn’t even bother taking heed of Laurie’s decision to never see him again; instead he continues to goad Laurie, and manipulates him into sleeping with him… and to keep seeing him. Laurie had made his decision. He wanted to no longer see Ralph and instead spend his time with Andrew, knowing that nothing could happen between them. He was happy with that choice and Ralph made him forget about it.
In the end, Andrew moves away to London and Laurie ends up rushing to Ralph’s house, apologising to him for not listening.
The book is beautifully written and I am so happy that I read it, but I have to admit I’m disappointed with the ending. I’m also disappointed that it is yet another gay book that just thinks it has to have a straight relationship in the form of Laurie and Nurse Adrian.
Despite my dislikes of this book, I’ll still recommend it to anyone who wants to read a coming of age story about a young gay man, who somehow manages to make three people fall in love with him by doing nothing. I want to know what he does because seriously, I would kill for that power.
For these reasons the book is only getting four stars out of five, which is a shame because I started out with high hopes for this novel, but certain things just let me down.
Crossposted from my book blog where I post reviews, hauls, updates and reblog images of books.
Short Review: The Charioteer is a lovely book about the struggles that homosexuals went through - and continue to go through. Laurie Odell has to face the stigma of being a gay man in the 1940s, as well as the many problems that are faced with any relationship. This is a fantastic coming of age story told from a young gay man’s point of view, as he struggles to decide who he is, who he wants to be and who everyone else thinks he is.
Long review with SPOILERS: Ever since reading “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller (the review of which will be coming soon - I am unable to put “asdfghjkjhgfsa” into words right now), as well as coming to terms with my own sexuality, I’ve been much more interested in novels that are about gay characters - after all, the classic heterosexual stories are so over told aren’t they?
I found this book when I was searching for another of Mary Renault’s books in my local bookstore, and after reading the blurb above I decided that it would be worth the buy.
It has taken me a while to get through this book for various reasons, which I will discuss in due course, when I get to the negatives of this book - though I’ll say it here and now, there aren’t many!
Now this book starts off with Laurie Odell as a young boy, watching as his father packs and leaves Laurie and his mother. It then skips to his time at school where Ralph Lanyon is being thrown out of the school, and Laurie, having worshipped the man from afar, thinks about protesting. Ralph calls him to his office and tells him not to start a fuss, before handing Laurie a book.
It then skips to Laurie coming home from being injured at Dunkirk. His legs has been broken and after several surgeries he’s able to keep it, but it’s shorter than the other, making him walk with a limp. They design a special boot for him that seems like an insignificant little moment, but then proves to be an important factor in Laurie having to decide what he’s going to do with his life.
At first he meets Andrew, a young man not fighting in the war because of his personal beliefs. He has been sent to help the hospital and most of the patients don’t take to kindly to him, because of his avoidance of the war. Laurie meets him on his first day whilst he is cleaning the toilet, and saves him from the rudeness of one of the patients in Laurie’s ward.
The two strike up an unlikely friendship and Laurie, having known deep down that he was homosexual but too afraid to admit it, finally comes to terms with who he is, realising that he is also in love with Andrew. He knows that he cannot tell Andrew, not because Andrew is this “straight man” but because he doesn’t want to make the man he loves question his beliefs.
I personally love Laurie and Andrew together and no word of a lie, when I got to the end where Andrew moves away to London, after finding out about Laurie and Ralph through Bunny, Ralph’s ex-boyfriend, I was ready to call the book quits and not even see how it ended. But then I remembered that I only had a few pages left, so why should I finish it?
Now, Laurie and Ralph… that is a relationship I don’t like and I’m more than annoyed that of any of the potential relationships that had the possibility of becoming real, that it had to be this one.
Which brings me to describing Ralph Lanyon himself. He’s a couple of years older than Laurie (though I somehow got it into my head that he was several years older, maybe ten or such) and went to the same school with him. He reappears into the story when Laurie is out receiving physiotherapy for his knee and he bumps into someone on the bus, who invites him to a party which Ralph will be attending.
I will admit that I was biased when he first appeared - he wasn’t Andrew and I wanted Andrew and Laurie to get together, and here was a man that was just going to get in the way of that. However, I came to realise that my hatred for him was totally and completely… warranted.
The man is a controlling, manipulative douche who is portrayed as a strong, decisive man through Laurie’s eyes. Initially I thought I would warm up to him as Laurie continued to feel love and talk to Andrew, growing closer and closer to him, and I thought that maybe they would finally get together in spite of the man that Laurie had idolised since he was young.
I was wrong.
The second I read that he had manipulated his doctor friend into putting a request for Laurie’s transfer to a hospital closer to him, thus pulling him away from Andrew, I knew that I couldn’t trust him.
I feel that I should love and adore him the way Laurie does, but I can’t bring myself to. He brings an air of abusiveness to the book, something which I don’t normally like reading, and the fact his controlling nature is never challenged makes my blood boil.
He wants to control Laurie and in the end he succeeds.
Whilst it is Ralph’s ex that drives the final wedge between Laurie and Andrew, he doesn’t even bother taking heed of Laurie’s decision to never see him again; instead he continues to goad Laurie, and manipulates him into sleeping with him… and to keep seeing him. Laurie had made his decision. He wanted to no longer see Ralph and instead spend his time with Andrew, knowing that nothing could happen between them. He was happy with that choice and Ralph made him forget about it.
In the end, Andrew moves away to London and Laurie ends up rushing to Ralph’s house, apologising to him for not listening.
The book is beautifully written and I am so happy that I read it, but I have to admit I’m disappointed with the ending. I’m also disappointed that it is yet another gay book that just thinks it has to have a straight relationship in the form of Laurie and Nurse Adrian.
Despite my dislikes of this book, I’ll still recommend it to anyone who wants to read a coming of age story about a young gay man, who somehow manages to make three people fall in love with him by doing nothing. I want to know what he does because seriously, I would kill for that power.
For these reasons the book is only getting four stars out of five, which is a shame because I started out with high hopes for this novel, but certain things just let me down.
there is a kind of overarching loneliness to growing up queer and untethered to forebears who share that queerness – no matter how much love i was surrounded with, there was still a sense of having sprung fully-formed from nowhere and thus being unfathomable (in some small and large ways) to those who knew me and know me and brought me into being.
reading the charioteer, engrossed in the firm and tender voice of renault, made me feel (perhaps for the first time, perhaps not) that i came from some beautiful and strange kind of alternative lineage for which i could not find the words.
many times throughout the charioteer, i found myself close to crying. strangely enough, i did not shed a single tear until, in the brief appended biography of renault, there came a collection of photos. renault, her wife, their dogs. walking together on the beach. all gone, but a part of each other, and a part of the world, and now a part of me.
reading the charioteer, engrossed in the firm and tender voice of renault, made me feel (perhaps for the first time, perhaps not) that i came from some beautiful and strange kind of alternative lineage for which i could not find the words.
many times throughout the charioteer, i found myself close to crying. strangely enough, i did not shed a single tear until, in the brief appended biography of renault, there came a collection of photos. renault, her wife, their dogs. walking together on the beach. all gone, but a part of each other, and a part of the world, and now a part of me.