The Ill-Made Knight by T. H. White

Apparently the books in the Once and Future King series just keep getting better and better, this one was wonderful. It tells the Lancelot and Guenevere story, but somehow it reads like a really good modern novel at the same time, like it's on two levels at once. The emotional landscape is both very modern and grounded in medieval tradition, White manages a really beautiful fusion of the two registers. There's less humour than in the previous books, but it's still there, such as the parallels between jousting and cricket, the knights with 'games mania', the re-interpretation of Tristram as 'one of the great comic characters', and the descriptions of Galahad as 'a prig'. But mostly the story centers on the fascinating and wonderfully told emotional tensions between Lancelot, Guenevere, Arthur and God (and sometimes the ill-fated Elaine). White makes all these legendary figures real people, but does it in such a way that they gain richness in the process. Unfortunately, he is much worse at female characters than male; while his portraits of Arthur and Lancelot are fully realised, Guenevere seems to only move towards being the completely developed and coherent character I would have liked to see. White's language is sometimes forced and contrived, but mostly it's absolutely brilliant, and I enjoyed this book enormously.