The protagonists of both these books are looking back at a particular time in their lives. There are many points of comparison between Leo and Charles:
Leo and Charles are both middle-class boys/young men who become close friends with a wealthier boy;
Both spend a period at the family home of the wealthier friend, and become immersed in an idealized upper class world which is alien to them—they do not fit into this world, but they long to;
Both have a certain fascination with the sister of the wealthy friend—in Charles's case, he transfers his feelings for Sebastian onto Julia; in Leo's case, he becomes obsessed with Marian's relationship with Ted because of his own adolescent crush on her.
In both books, the story told is necessarily nostalgic because the narrator is looking back upon an early point in his life from the perspective of a much older man. For Charles, his years with Sebastian represent a particular glowing summer in his early existence, and Oxford is described like a dreamworld, a "city of aquatint." However, under the surface, all is not as it seems, and the world begins to slip away as Sebastian falls into drink and depression—his beauty, and the beauty of his world, is only a facade.
Similarly, for Leo, the beauty and appeal of the upper class world quickly crumbles away as he sees what is really going on beneath the surface, and how his own actions contribute to disaster for his supposed love object, Marian.
There is, then, nostalgia in these stories in terms of a longing for a time gone by, but although rose-tinted glasses are worn, both narrators acknowledge that things were not always as beautiful as they may once have seemed.
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