Those voices that will not be drowned
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Those voices that will not be drowned |
| Author(s): | naraht |
| Date(s): | 24 December 2010 |
| Length: | 5308 words |
| Genre(s): | sequel |
| Fandom(s): | Mary Renault |
| Relationship(s): | |
| External Links: | archived on AO3 Yuletide |
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Those voices that will not be drowned is a long story by naraht based on Mary Renault's 1953 novel The Charioteer. It is set after the novel, and covers the rest of the war, ending shortly after peace is declared.
Synopsis
Laurie returns to Oxford to complete his degree. Ralph is posted to Bletchley Park, riding up to Oxford on a motorcycle for regular visits to Laurie in his digs. After graduation, Laurie becomes a teacher at Stowe School; however, when the war draws to a close, he turns instead to writing, while Ralph considers transferring to the peacetime security services. They celebrate with a performance of Peter Grimes, followed by a visit to a gay club in Soho.
Background
"Those voices that will not be drowned" was written for toujours_nigel in Yuletide 2010. The author later commented on the writing process on her blog. In particular, she says:
When I first planned out and started writing this story, I expected it to be around 2000 words. Maybe 2500. On the day of the deadline it topped out at just over 5000. Oh dear me, it gave me an anxious moment or two as it just kept expanding and scenes insisted upon being written. "This story," I complained to my mother, "wants to be better than I want it to be." But it seemingly had to be written, and written in this form.—comment by the author
For Yuletide 2011, Naraht wrote a sequel, "Essex is guilty and condemned to die", and gave the sequence the overall title, Post World War Two Blues. The third story, "What we are, we remain", continues Laurie and Ralph's story into the 1960s.
Comments
The story received many favourable comments, including the following on the Yuletide site:
- "This is gorgeous; kind of painful, but you convey the necessity of that very well, and in the end it is worth it - what is, what must be borne, and what they nevertheless have."—comment by wildestranger
- "This is such a satisfying story! Well written - true to canon - providing such a balanced and real ending to the book. It is canon to me now. I love the way you took the prompt and ran with it [...] I love the debate Laurie has with Andrew and the way it resurfaces as his relationship with Ralph endures. I plan to re-read this story many a time. Thank you very much for writing it."—comment by fawatson
- "Oh, this is so heartbreaking and lovely. Thank you thank you for creating a realistic if ambiguously happy ending for Laurie and Ralph. And with Bletchley Park and Quentin Crisp! It's perfect."—comment by Ciliant
Additional comments were added on maryrenaultfics, where there was considerable discussion over the likelihood of Ralph working in military intelligence, whether during the war (at Bletchley Park) or afterwards (in MI5), given his homosexuality, the need to pass a security review, and the fate of Alan Turing a few years later. (NOTE: The threads in which these comments made are locked because of the change in maryrenaultfics policy after LiveJournal allowed comments to be reposted to Facebook and Twitter.)