5.0 out of 5 based on 1 reviews. – Customer review on 23/12/2007

"The Charioteer" is a beautiful book. Though ostensibly about "gay" characters (hardly a word in use at the time) it will be of interest to all who, as one reviewer put it, "wish to understand their fellow creatures". Mary Renault just seems to have it all, whether writing contemporary or historical: a fine writing style, beautifully observed incidents and characters and impeccable construction. Whether one is gay or straight, one can empathise immediately with the main character here as an "everyman" from any age who wants what he cannot have--not merely the innocent young man who is the object of his affection, but happiness and fulfillment without compomise of his ideals. That ultimately is the subject of the book, the search for the beautiful and good and the struggle to obtain it without, in the process, through carnal desire, destroying it.
Maybe this makes the book sound a bit high flown, but in fact it's totally down-to-earth. The setting, characters and dialogue are utterly believable. One can hear the rattle of tea cups on the trolly, smell the anaesthetic in the hospital ward, feel the breeze in the orchard where Laurie and his young friend meet. No other author I think could achieve this balance of mundane detail and spiritual and psychological yearning. I cannot praise this book highly enough, and would urge potential readers not to be put off by the subject matter. Gay or straight, we all want the same thing--happiness--and that's what this book addresses itself to.