One for the Ages
Rudyard Kipling was the first novelist who ever made me cry. George MacDonald Fraser was the second. Mary Renault was the third. She did it with "Funeral Games," which is about the fight between the relatives of Alexander the Great after the death of Alexander.
For what it's worth, I'm an off-duty Marine and there aren't many things that can make me cry because I typically don't feel sorry for anyone. I read all of Mary Renault away back in the middle 1980s and found all of her works about equally good. If instead of novels Renault had built watches, the people who then worked for Rolex would have died of starvation.
Solomon sez: You ought to try one of Renault's books if you like vividly imagined, hauntingly beautiful, fast moving stories that are accurate in detail; they also feature heroic characters, timeless themes and tragic endings. If you don't care for that sort of stuff, read something else.
