thesummer 's review for:

The Charioteer by Mary Renault

4.0

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An excellent novel! I don't normally read authors who don't make being funny one of their main goals, and I generally am not a fan of depressing novels, I actually really enjoyed this one. Even though it's set in WWII and the main character is a war vet who is recovering from Dunkirk injuries and is thus constantly in chronic pain, plus being gay was illegal so he's stressed and angsty about it, since the subject of the book is love (the main character's favourite book is Plato's Phaedrus, there are lots of allusions, it was a good chance for me to reread it as I went), the book is not focused on misery but on love and people, which brings a lot of happiness. It was also just a super well written romance, all the more so for being very differently executed from a lot of the modern day or fantasy stuff I usually read.