The Charioteer
Mary Renault · 1953
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.
The case against
Renault's discretion shades into obscurity; key emotional and physical turns happen in prose so oblique you can finish unsure what actually occurred between Laurie and either man. The Phaedrus allegory gets driven hard enough to bruise. And the novel's contempt for the effeminate men at Alec's party has aged into the most dated thing in it.
Romance · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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