The Charioteer
A WWII novel about a wounded soldier torn between his love for two very different men: a conscientious objector and a fellow officer. Renault writes gay love with absolute moral seriousness and without sentimentality. The love triangle is psychologically precise, and the choice Laurie ultimately makes is among the most considered in queer fiction.
Some readers who love the book's restraint still hit a wall with it: “I love the story but also got lost,” one admits, faulting the same indirection that shapes the romance for also obscuring plot and motive. Others call the emotional and sexual withholding a genuine blind spot rather than tasteful reticence, describing the book as “weirdly antiseptic, with a vast blind spot.” Andrew, the conscientious objector at the third point of the triangle, comes off remote and underwritten, filtered entirely through Laurie's subjective view; a critic notes “we see him only through Laurie's eyes and Laurie isn't objective.” At least one reader flags the book as outright unkind to its women, calling it “Also very nasty, very misogynistic!!”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
