Tolkien Compared to Contemporary Authors

[Guinevere]

Since I discovered The Lord of the Rings (at the age of fifty!) I have been “hooked” by very few other books.
Among these are Mary Renault’s historical novels set in ancient Greece. She evokes this distant time and place in a way that I feel transported there.(Similar to the way I feel transported to Middle Earth.)
Her characters speak and act fitting to their time and culture, they are vivid and plausible. (there’s much historical fiction that doesn’t succeed in this: just contemporary characters and attitudes promenading before superficial historical settings.) My favourites are "The Persian boy" and "The last of the Wine" but I also love Renault’s “The charioteer” which is set during WW II.
Renault’s books are compelling and moving. Same as with Tolkien’s works, I can reread them several times –and often discover things I have previously overlooked, for Renault is very subtle, and some things are just hinted at.

(By the way, Mary Renault was one of Tolkien’s students and he himself read and liked at least some of her novels!)

Someone here on the Downs recommended A.S.Byatt’s “Possession” to me and I started reading it, but sadly didn't get really into it, so I never finished the book.