[ book tip by Dianne Brown ] This is a gay love story. But to say that is to immediately put it into a particular category which wouldn’t do it justice. No one would begin a description of Romeo and Juliet as a straight love story. So let’s start again.

This is a love story. Set during World War Two, it concerns three men. Told in the clipped style so typical of that era. Imagine Brief Encounter with two men, Daniel Craig and Jude Law, perhaps, as the star crossed lovers, and you’ll have some idea. It’s just as moving too. One man accepts what he is, the other has a lingering feeling it’s wrong, and when he falls for a younger man, doesn’t want to spoil him, as he sees it. All three have their dreams and also their needs, while the war has changed their ordinary lives and destroyed some of their hopes. 

It’s one of those stories where you really want to find out what happened after. As long as you liked that ending, of course, and I’ve a feeling I wouldn’t. Larkin said a good novel was believable, that it made you care, and made you continue to care after. This does. The charioteer of the title is taken from the Paedrus of Plato, who described life as being like a chariot linked to two very differing horses, one white and beautiful, one black and awkward. The flesh and the spirit or hopes and needs, dreams and reality.

[ Favourite quote ] 'It can be good to be given what you want: it can be better, in the end, never to have it proved to you that this was what you wanted.'

[ book info ] Renault, Mary: The Charioteer. (Book language: English) Longmans, London, 1953 (1953).