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The Friendly Young Ladies
Set in 1937, The Friendly Young Ladies is a romantic comedy of off-Bloomsbury bohemia. Sheltered, naïve, and just eighteen, Elsie leaves the stifling environment of her parents’ home in Cornwall to seek out her sister, Leo, who had run away nine years earlier. She finds Leo sharing a houseboat, and a bed, with the beautiful, fair-haired Helen. While Elsie’s arrival seems innocent enough, it is the first of a series of events that will turn Helen and Leo’s contented life inside out. Soon a randy young doctor is chasing after all three women at once, a neighborly friendship begins to show an erotic tinge, and long-quiet ghosts from Leo’s past begin to surface. Before long, no one is sure just who feels what for whom.
Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in the early 1940s, creating characters that are lighthearted, charming, and free-spirited partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness or Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. The result is a witty and stylish story that offers exceptional insight into the world of upcoming writers and artists of in 1930s London, chronicling their rejection of society’s established sexual mores and their heroic pursuits of art and life.
Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in the early 1940s, creating characters that are lighthearted, charming, and free-spirited partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness or Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. The result is a witty and stylish story that offers exceptional insight into the world of upcoming writers and artists of in 1930s London, chronicling their rejection of society’s established sexual mores and their heroic pursuits of art and life.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1943
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1744 people want to read
About the author
Mary Renault
30 books1,688 followersMary Renault was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander.
Her historical novels are all set in ancient Greece. They include a pair of novels about the mythological hero Theseus and a trilogy about the career of Alexander the Great. In a sense, The Charioteer (1953), the story of two young gay servicemen in the 1940s who try to model their relationship on the ideals expressed in Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium, is a warm-up for Renault's historical novels. By turning away from the 20th century and focusing on stories about male lovers in the warrior societies of ancient Greece, Renault no longer had to deal with homosexuality and anti-gay prejudice as social "problems". Instead she was free to focus on larger ethical and philosophical concerns, while examining the nature of love and leadership. The Charioteer could not be published in the U.S. until 1959, after the success of The Last of the Wine proved that American readers and critics would accept a serious gay love story.
Her historical novels are all set in ancient Greece. They include a pair of novels about the mythological hero Theseus and a trilogy about the career of Alexander the Great. In a sense, The Charioteer (1953), the story of two young gay servicemen in the 1940s who try to model their relationship on the ideals expressed in Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium, is a warm-up for Renault's historical novels. By turning away from the 20th century and focusing on stories about male lovers in the warrior societies of ancient Greece, Renault no longer had to deal with homosexuality and anti-gay prejudice as social "problems". Instead she was free to focus on larger ethical and philosophical concerns, while examining the nature of love and leadership. The Charioteer could not be published in the U.S. until 1959, after the success of The Last of the Wine proved that American readers and critics would accept a serious gay love story.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 117 reviews
September 10, 2012
I think this is Renault's only contemporary novel (it's set in 1937; she wrote it during WWII) and (maybe?) her only one with a lesbian couple.
The Vintage edition includes an afterword Renault wrote in 1983, which is interesting but rather annoying because she mostly uses it as a soapbox to tell the younger LGB to stop marching around demanding that everyone respect their differences. She frames this as an explanation of why she wrote The Friendly Young Ladies -- she wanted to show that people in same-sex relationships were perfectly capable of getting through life without grand tragedy a la The Well of Loneliness, and that in the light of great suffering such as that caused by war, she couldn't feel sorry for herself for being different in a way that she could so easily downplay in front of unsympathetic heterosexuals. What a nice generation gap, Mary Renault!
Lillian Faderman's 2003 afterword annoyed me just about as much, though. Look Dr. Faderman: if someone is in a long-term open relationship with another woman, and both women have affairs with men for the first 14 years of this relationship, and then they stop that and live together monogamously for the rest of their lives, and during all of this they refuse to identify as lesbians and call themselves bisexuals instead --- any chance you could really respect that instead of sounding so skeptical about it?
Anyway, the story.
It starts off focusing on Elsie, a painfully naive seventeen-year-old girl who decides to run away from her horrible parents and find her older sister, who also ran away from home. Elsie imagines that Leo will have grown up into one of the varieties of sophisticated woman categorized in the romance novels Elsie reads. But she finds that Leo hasn't changed at all from the tomboy she remembers; Leo still loves messing about in boats and makes a living by writing trashy Westerns under a male pseudonym. She lives in a houseboat with the actually sophisticated Helen, a technical illustrator of surgical procedures.
The other two characters of importance are men -- Peter, a young doctor whose favorite method in treating women is to make them fall in love with him, and who has utterly succeeded with Elsie; and Joe, an adventurous, empathetic novelist and Leo's best friend.
Much of The Friendly Young Ladies is an absolute masterwork of double meanings. Helen and Leo are a perfect team in giving Elsie what she needs while protecting their relationship and in getting exactly what they want out of Peter without giving him anything more than he deserves (which is very little). They, and the way Renault writes about them, are brilliant and hilarious.
The rest of The Friendly Young Ladies is more difficult -- it's about Leo's relationship with Joe. I thought that what happens in this part of the story was quite ambiguous, but both afterwords discuss it as though
I have really mixed feelings about Joe. He is clearly a really, really good friend for Leo, and he seems to be a good human being too, except for the occasional small reminders (mostly having to do with his past as a rancher in the U.S.) that much of what makes him fun for Leo (who, again, makes her living off writing popular Westerns that are full of inaccuracies and stereotypes) is also what makes him a colonizer. 19th and 20th century British novels are a lot nicer when you can ignore Britain's global context....
And I have really mixed feelings about what Joe does
He's brilliant and I don't know whether to love him or hate him (or his author), but then I probably don't have to choose either for a person who can write, "Love is a word, like God, which can be used to beg every kind of question."
The Vintage edition includes an afterword Renault wrote in 1983, which is interesting but rather annoying because she mostly uses it as a soapbox to tell the younger LGB to stop marching around demanding that everyone respect their differences. She frames this as an explanation of why she wrote The Friendly Young Ladies -- she wanted to show that people in same-sex relationships were perfectly capable of getting through life without grand tragedy a la The Well of Loneliness, and that in the light of great suffering such as that caused by war, she couldn't feel sorry for herself for being different in a way that she could so easily downplay in front of unsympathetic heterosexuals. What a nice generation gap, Mary Renault!
Lillian Faderman's 2003 afterword annoyed me just about as much, though. Look Dr. Faderman: if someone is in a long-term open relationship with another woman, and both women have affairs with men for the first 14 years of this relationship, and then they stop that and live together monogamously for the rest of their lives, and during all of this they refuse to identify as lesbians and call themselves bisexuals instead --- any chance you could really respect that instead of sounding so skeptical about it?
Anyway, the story.
It starts off focusing on Elsie, a painfully naive seventeen-year-old girl who decides to run away from her horrible parents and find her older sister, who also ran away from home. Elsie imagines that Leo will have grown up into one of the varieties of sophisticated woman categorized in the romance novels Elsie reads. But she finds that Leo hasn't changed at all from the tomboy she remembers; Leo still loves messing about in boats and makes a living by writing trashy Westerns under a male pseudonym. She lives in a houseboat with the actually sophisticated Helen, a technical illustrator of surgical procedures.
The other two characters of importance are men -- Peter, a young doctor whose favorite method in treating women is to make them fall in love with him, and who has utterly succeeded with Elsie; and Joe, an adventurous, empathetic novelist and Leo's best friend.
Much of The Friendly Young Ladies is an absolute masterwork of double meanings. Helen and Leo are a perfect team in giving Elsie what she needs while protecting their relationship and in getting exactly what they want out of Peter without giving him anything more than he deserves (which is very little). They, and the way Renault writes about them, are brilliant and hilarious.
The rest of The Friendly Young Ladies is more difficult -- it's about Leo's relationship with Joe. I thought that what happens in this part of the story was quite ambiguous, but both afterwords discuss it as though
I have really mixed feelings about Joe. He is clearly a really, really good friend for Leo, and he seems to be a good human being too, except for the occasional small reminders (mostly having to do with his past as a rancher in the U.S.) that much of what makes him fun for Leo (who, again, makes her living off writing popular Westerns that are full of inaccuracies and stereotypes) is also what makes him a colonizer. 19th and 20th century British novels are a lot nicer when you can ignore Britain's global context....
And I have really mixed feelings about what Joe does
He's brilliant and I don't know whether to love him or hate him (or his author), but then I probably don't have to choose either for a person who can write, "Love is a word, like God, which can be used to beg every kind of question."
October 5, 2021
Surprised by all the mixed/negative reviews here, because I LOVED this. Not much in the way of plot, but the beauty is in the rich characterizations & Renault is just so, so good at capturing the gravity of even the smallest gestures, interactions, & silences between people—& how they can slowly ripple out with life-changing repercussions.
[Read #10 of "2021: My Year of (Mostly) Midcentury Women Writers"]
[Read #10 of "2021: My Year of (Mostly) Midcentury Women Writers"]
April 27, 2017
Where do I even begin? Why did I even read this? I didn't care for Praise Singer at all, but I thought well, maybe where the homosexuality didn't entice, lesbianism might. But this...I hated this with passion, made all the more frustrating by the fact that it had so much potential. Specifically it had a deathly soporific beginning, decent first part of the middle and then abysmal last part of the middle and the end. Much like her other book, this one was terribly overwritten and in all the wrong parts, the things you want to know more about are obfuscated, the tedious minutiae is drawn out. Whether this is due to lack of proper editing or simply was ok by the era's standards is impossible to tell. But there are some things about this book that are very era specific (originally published in 1944), mainly the fact that it's a lesbian book without a lesbian component. All Sapphic matters are at best alluded to, so as one critic put cleverly put it the readers never quite know just how friendly the ladies are. And of course I wasn't expecting graphic sex scenes from a book of that age, but this one lacks even simple affections that couples share. And probably that's precisely what happens when a self hating lesbian writes a book about her own kind. Elaborating...and gently since one must dis the dead...the author was in a relationship with another woman for most of her life. For the last 30 or so years the relationship was exclusive, for the first however many years both of them apparently had male lovers. This promiscuous disclaimer led them to thin of themselves as bisexual, which was apparently ok, while despising the term lesbian, which apparently wasn't. Sounds like someone was either in seriously denial or seriously desperate to fit in. Labels...aren't they ever so important. More than you know, in the author's own afterword she states (and I paraphrase) that anyone who dares think themselves as something other than a carbon based bipedal life form first and foremost DESERVES to be discriminated against and shouldn't mind it. Seriously? That's an argument? Yeah, ok, maybe in some perfect world where gender/sexual/racial equality has somehow been achieved, there is a nice homogenous society where everyone is happy just being a citizen of the world. Considering how terribly gays have been (and in all too many places still are) treated historically, that attitude is insane. No one deserves to be discriminated against for being themselves if they harm no one in the process, no one. What sort of a Nazi attitude was that to have for a person who wrote gay books and supported an anti apartheids movement? Also, for someone who lived for a long time in South Africa there is a really casual racial slur in the book, that's absolutely gratuitous and probably should have been edited out upon republication. Just a thought. I don't really want to get into all that political correctness and digress from my righteous rage about the contents, so here we go...again from the afterword, the author appears to have glorified male homosexual relationships of Ancient Greece and Rome (oh the romance of older men and their catamites, the allure of child molestation), it's evident in all her other books, because presumably it was so widely accepted. Of course, lesbians didn't fare quite as awesomely, but who cares, right. Author certainly didn't, she didn't even think she was one. Maybe it's a mentality of a bygone era too, total acceptance of a patriarchal society and its rules. Who knows. This book (her most autobiographical ironically enough) was written as a reaction to a much more serious work of the time dealing with gender and sexuality, which the author found too depressing and dour and literally laughable. She wanted to writes her (pseudo)gays to be actually gay. Happy, irreverent, romantically and sexually indiscriminate...and so ultimately unbelievable and subsequently utterly unlikeable. Maybe believable and relatable to the author (it was her life essentially) or someone like her or someone from that time, but that just isn't enough. A genuinely good character stands the test of time despite the era's conventionalities. The author (afterword again) proudly states that she made the relationship as explicit as she wanted to...right, like sensors of the time didn't have a field day with this so much so they minded the title. But ok, pride's important, though apparently not gay pride. Anyway, you don't have to support the parade marching and flag waving and all that, there's something to be said for being low key...but this book's message stated very plainly within its pages is if you're gay or otherwise different hide yourself, be quiet, don't draw attention to yourself, you're a minority, the majority makes the rules, mind their rules no matter what, behave, show your colors to no one but select others like you, maybe just maybe the right person of the majority designated appropriate gender will come along and save you from yourself. Otherwise as mentioned above you deserve to be discriminated against and you should endure it. Quite possibly one of the worst messages conveyed by a book. I suppose this is what happens when a self hating person writes about their life. And not even a good book at that. Infuriatingly frustrating anger inducing waste of time this was. Stay away. Just stay away.
May 2, 2021
Ρομαντική, χαμηλών τόνων, προσέγγιση της φιλίας και του έρωτα. Βρετανικό φλέγμα και δυνατή εσανς της βρετανικής εξοχής λίγο έξω από το Λονδίνο ότι μένει στο τέλος
June 20, 2025
Editing my review now that I'm reading The Well of Loneliness:
I get it now! Sorry for doubting you, Mary.
I get it now! Sorry for doubting you, Mary.
May 23, 2020
[[2020 reread: Every bit as devastating as the first time through. And incredibly subtle, wry, clever writing and characterization. What a book.]]
A cleverly wrought, beautifully written, and often very funny picture of a handful of Bohemian entanglements, which packs a surprising emotional punch as its most ambiguous thread snaps in the climax. The titular young ladies are Leo, a trousers-wearing, swaggering author of Western novels under the nom de plume Tex O'Hara, and her lover Helen, a kind-hearted gentle woman with a delicious acerbic streak. But the story is almost entirely Leo's, and as she comes more and more into focus - and finally comes apart at the seams - the book reveals depths of psychological insight and compassion.
When I wrote here about Renault's Fire From Heaven, the first of her Alexander the Great series, I remarked that Renault "makes you share some of the work," by leaving much of her characters' feelings and motivations implied rather than explicit, exercises in inference for the reader. I found the challenge participatory and engaging.
In The Friendly Young Ladies, Renault had already brought this style to bear. Here, though, the obliqueness verges at times on maddening. Conversations between Leo and Helen, in particular, are frustratingly opaque. I spent the first nine-tenths of the book baffled by Leo; the nature and purpose of her relationships with men were a complete mystery. I couldn't make sense out of her.
And perhaps the density of that shroud makes it all the more devastating when the shroud dissolves in the book's climax, when Leo cracks open and the pieces fall away to reveal her true inner life. Suddenly all her ambiguities come into sharp focus, and the picture one sees is achingly sad.
It is an astonishing execution. The events leading to it play themselves out in vicious subversion of expectations; the sequence has elements of a sex farce, but there's nothing funny about it, and it grows increasingly grotesque as rawer and rawer emotions become exposed.
And, it's very nearly a dirty trick, coming as it does in a book that until then had been light and funny, quick-witted and deliciously trenchant. (A hilarious highlight is the sequence in which Leo flirts with a woman expertly and outrageously, with the purpose of humiliating the woman's boyfriend, a thoughtless, arrogant jackass who aims to cure her with his superior psychology.) The dissection of Leo is equally trenchant, of course, but the air of lightness and fun is lulling and deceiving.
A cleverly wrought, beautifully written, and often very funny picture of a handful of Bohemian entanglements, which packs a surprising emotional punch as its most ambiguous thread snaps in the climax. The titular young ladies are Leo, a trousers-wearing, swaggering author of Western novels under the nom de plume Tex O'Hara, and her lover Helen, a kind-hearted gentle woman with a delicious acerbic streak. But the story is almost entirely Leo's, and as she comes more and more into focus - and finally comes apart at the seams - the book reveals depths of psychological insight and compassion.
When I wrote here about Renault's Fire From Heaven, the first of her Alexander the Great series, I remarked that Renault "makes you share some of the work," by leaving much of her characters' feelings and motivations implied rather than explicit, exercises in inference for the reader. I found the challenge participatory and engaging.
In The Friendly Young Ladies, Renault had already brought this style to bear. Here, though, the obliqueness verges at times on maddening. Conversations between Leo and Helen, in particular, are frustratingly opaque. I spent the first nine-tenths of the book baffled by Leo; the nature and purpose of her relationships with men were a complete mystery. I couldn't make sense out of her.
And perhaps the density of that shroud makes it all the more devastating when the shroud dissolves in the book's climax, when Leo cracks open and the pieces fall away to reveal her true inner life. Suddenly all her ambiguities come into sharp focus, and the picture one sees is achingly sad.
It is an astonishing execution. The events leading to it play themselves out in vicious subversion of expectations; the sequence has elements of a sex farce, but there's nothing funny about it, and it grows increasingly grotesque as rawer and rawer emotions become exposed.
And, it's very nearly a dirty trick, coming as it does in a book that until then had been light and funny, quick-witted and deliciously trenchant. (A hilarious highlight is the sequence in which Leo flirts with a woman expertly and outrageously, with the purpose of humiliating the woman's boyfriend, a thoughtless, arrogant jackass who aims to cure her with his superior psychology.) The dissection of Leo is equally trenchant, of course, but the air of lightness and fun is lulling and deceiving.
October 16, 2014
I was severely disappointed in this novel, by an author whose classically-themed books I enjoyed. I actually read the Virago 2005 reprint, which contains the Afterword by the author herself, but no other commentary.
The story concerns the timid, repressed Elsie Lane's great adventure in running away from her stifling, conflict-ridden, suburban life in Cornwall, to go in search of her older sister Leonora, who also ran away, ostensibly with a man (actually, a good mate). Leo, as she's known, has all the independence and spirit that Elsie lacks. Elsie only gets up the spunk to make a break for it because she's fallen for the local doctor, Peter, an utterly charming cad who encourages her to develop herself more.
Elsie finds Leo living in a houseboat on the Thames with her girlfriend Helen, a nurse. Helen is smart and sophisticated but also kind-hearted. After the initial shock, they take Elsie in on a temporary basis. In response, finally, to a letter Elsie writes him, Peter then turns up and proceeds to make a play for both Helen and Leo. He is partly successful, but doesn't seem to realise they both have his measure and quite wittily play him for a sucker.
If this was all the story was wrapped around, it would have worked, but Renault utterly spoils it by introducing a much more substantial character, Joe Flint, a man raised for a time in Arizona, who now also lives on the river and who writes serious fiction. He has become Leo's best friend, giving her much of the material for the Westerns she writes for a living. He is, predictably enough, in love with Leo, but he manages to keep his feelings under wraps for quite a long time. However, one night he catches Leo having a light flirtation with Peter, a man he instinctively dislikes. Forcing the issue, he gets Leo to sleep with him and this plummets into a discovery that they actually care for each other deeply enough to cause Leo to consider leaving Helen and following Joe, who has announced, in a farewell letter to her, that he is leaving England to return to Arizona and that he'll wait for a few days, in case she wants to join him.
The novel leaves this situation frustratingly unresolved. In the morning, Helen finds Leo asleep on the couch after coming home late the night before and assumes she's been with Peter. She gets a shock to discover it was Joe instead and is indecisive about going into work, but finally does, leaving Leo by herself. Leo starts to pack her things - intending, presumably, to follow Joe - but is pulled up short when she sees one of Helen's dresses. In confusion, she is left to cry her eyes out on the bed. Does she pull herself together and go to Joe? Does she leave a note for Helen? Does she stay until Helen comes home...? I found this sad, confusing ending totally unsatisfactory and very much out of phase with the tone of the rest of the novel. Leo and Helen have had a happy relationship for years; Leo and Joe, a top friendship. But Renault seems to suggest that all Leo's boyishness and independence is some kind of "arrested development"; find True Love with the Right Man and she'll be able to drop her competent, butch exterior and become a Real Woman after all!
Renault wrote the book partly in response to the unrelieved misery of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, the first novel in English, as far as I'm aware, to feature lesbian relationships as the central theme and to plead for acceptance and understanding on the part of society. The book caused an almighty ruckus and was banned in the UK until 1948. Hall had the misfortune to be only a "middlebrow" writer, so the book cannot be read as seriously today; it is sentimental, overwritten and at times mawkishly self-pitying, so I can understand Renault's rejection of it. But it was never intended for people like Renault, with their smug sophistication; Hall was well aware of the many people in society who could never openly and honestly proclaim who they really were and she intended her novel to be read by her usual readership: people who went to church on Sundays and had probably never met a homosexual.
While I can understand Renault's reaction to The Well, I find her comments, in the Afterword, on the "defensive stridency" of "congregated homosexuals waving banners" highly offensive. What kind of society does she think gays are living in? Until recent decades male homosexuality was against the law in western society; lesbianism, often simply unrecognised. In conclusion I would have to say that I regard this novel as not only poorly thought out, but also homophobic. I have yet to read the truly Great Gay Novel.
The story concerns the timid, repressed Elsie Lane's great adventure in running away from her stifling, conflict-ridden, suburban life in Cornwall, to go in search of her older sister Leonora, who also ran away, ostensibly with a man (actually, a good mate). Leo, as she's known, has all the independence and spirit that Elsie lacks. Elsie only gets up the spunk to make a break for it because she's fallen for the local doctor, Peter, an utterly charming cad who encourages her to develop herself more.
Elsie finds Leo living in a houseboat on the Thames with her girlfriend Helen, a nurse. Helen is smart and sophisticated but also kind-hearted. After the initial shock, they take Elsie in on a temporary basis. In response, finally, to a letter Elsie writes him, Peter then turns up and proceeds to make a play for both Helen and Leo. He is partly successful, but doesn't seem to realise they both have his measure and quite wittily play him for a sucker.
If this was all the story was wrapped around, it would have worked, but Renault utterly spoils it by introducing a much more substantial character, Joe Flint, a man raised for a time in Arizona, who now also lives on the river and who writes serious fiction. He has become Leo's best friend, giving her much of the material for the Westerns she writes for a living. He is, predictably enough, in love with Leo, but he manages to keep his feelings under wraps for quite a long time. However, one night he catches Leo having a light flirtation with Peter, a man he instinctively dislikes. Forcing the issue, he gets Leo to sleep with him and this plummets into a discovery that they actually care for each other deeply enough to cause Leo to consider leaving Helen and following Joe, who has announced, in a farewell letter to her, that he is leaving England to return to Arizona and that he'll wait for a few days, in case she wants to join him.
The novel leaves this situation frustratingly unresolved. In the morning, Helen finds Leo asleep on the couch after coming home late the night before and assumes she's been with Peter. She gets a shock to discover it was Joe instead and is indecisive about going into work, but finally does, leaving Leo by herself. Leo starts to pack her things - intending, presumably, to follow Joe - but is pulled up short when she sees one of Helen's dresses. In confusion, she is left to cry her eyes out on the bed. Does she pull herself together and go to Joe? Does she leave a note for Helen? Does she stay until Helen comes home...? I found this sad, confusing ending totally unsatisfactory and very much out of phase with the tone of the rest of the novel. Leo and Helen have had a happy relationship for years; Leo and Joe, a top friendship. But Renault seems to suggest that all Leo's boyishness and independence is some kind of "arrested development"; find True Love with the Right Man and she'll be able to drop her competent, butch exterior and become a Real Woman after all!
Renault wrote the book partly in response to the unrelieved misery of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, the first novel in English, as far as I'm aware, to feature lesbian relationships as the central theme and to plead for acceptance and understanding on the part of society. The book caused an almighty ruckus and was banned in the UK until 1948. Hall had the misfortune to be only a "middlebrow" writer, so the book cannot be read as seriously today; it is sentimental, overwritten and at times mawkishly self-pitying, so I can understand Renault's rejection of it. But it was never intended for people like Renault, with their smug sophistication; Hall was well aware of the many people in society who could never openly and honestly proclaim who they really were and she intended her novel to be read by her usual readership: people who went to church on Sundays and had probably never met a homosexual.
While I can understand Renault's reaction to The Well, I find her comments, in the Afterword, on the "defensive stridency" of "congregated homosexuals waving banners" highly offensive. What kind of society does she think gays are living in? Until recent decades male homosexuality was against the law in western society; lesbianism, often simply unrecognised. In conclusion I would have to say that I regard this novel as not only poorly thought out, but also homophobic. I have yet to read the truly Great Gay Novel.
May 2, 2018
There were moments when I thought I would really like this book. But things just didn't go the way they should have. I know, it's up to the author to decide how a book should go, but my wishes for every single character were thwarted and I didn't really like how anyone behaved or ended up.
October 6, 2025
Certainly an original and engaging story. Many profound thoughts and observations resonated with me. I was surprised by their brilliance and realism (after all, this book was written almost 100 years ago). The characters were fascinating, even the shy, inexperienced, and naive Elsie. And I really liked Joe.
Some of the reading pleasure was spoiled by some passages that were "over-intellectualized" or didn't make sense to me. Furthermore, the style of "not writing directly" about what was happening, what someone was feeling, or what they were thinking sometimes bothered me, to the point of demanding, "Just tell me what you mean!"
A writer I'd like to get to know better, as this is the first book of hers I've read.
Some of the reading pleasure was spoiled by some passages that were "over-intellectualized" or didn't make sense to me. Furthermore, the style of "not writing directly" about what was happening, what someone was feeling, or what they were thinking sometimes bothered me, to the point of demanding, "Just tell me what you mean!"
A writer I'd like to get to know better, as this is the first book of hers I've read.
September 5, 2024
Ich habe die Geschichte und das Setting sehr gemocht, die Darstellung der unkonventionellen Beziehungen der Frauen und deren Bi-Identität geben ein interessantes zeitliches Dokument ab. Elsie als Figur war durch ihre Naivität manchmal etwas nervig, aber konnte sich dann im Laufe der Zeit etwas davon lösen. Der Ausgang der Geschichte für Leo hat mich weder überzeugt noch hat er mir gefallen, weswegen ich es spannend fand, dass Nicole Seifert im Nachwort sagt, dass Mary Renault das Ende ein paar Jahre nach Veröffentlichung auch nicht mehr so geschrieben hätte und es wohl selbst als "silly" bezeichnet hat.
Alles in allem ein empfehlenswerter Roman, der queere Identitäten in den 30er Jahren beleuchtet.
Alles in allem ein empfehlenswerter Roman, der queere Identitäten in den 30er Jahren beleuchtet.
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May 7, 2023I laughed, I cried, I was jealous of the descriptive passages…
Which btw, why didn’t anyone say Mary Renault was *funny*?? I checked this book out from the library because it was the only physical copy of a Renault book that was readily available. Having read the plot synopsis/various reviews of The Charioteer and her Alexander books, I assumed this was going to be some oblique, mostly depressing mid-century slog. As it turns out, it’s the book Renault wrote after reading and apparently heartlessly laughing through (her words, not mine!) The Well of Loneliness, so comedy is the name of the game.
It starts with timid, sheltered seventeen-year-old Elsie being encouraged by her very horny doctor (“Should he kiss her? he was thinking. It seemed a shame not to; it would probably make her happy for the rest of the day. She was looking much less unattractive already. All she wanted was a tonic, the sort that didn’t come out of a bottle.”) to live a little. So Elsie, taking the advice of the man she loves (they’ve only met 3-4 times, but in her defense she reads a lot of romance novels), runs away from home to go stay with her sister, boyish Leo, who was kicked out by their parents several years earlier under mysterious circumstances.
Leo, as it turns out, has been writing westerns under a pen name and lives on a houseboat with beautiful artist Helen. Leo and Helen are the friendly young ladies of the title - and here a moment of silence for Henry Reed, a reviewer who per this book’s Afterward to the Vintage Edition complained, “One cannot even tell precisely *how* friendly the young ladies have been to each other.” Henry, buddy, one definitely can.
Of course, the horny doctor shows up at Leo and Helen’s place and decides they ALSO need a taste of his particular medicine, and hijinks (and drama) ensue.
Funny, lazy, playful, ironic - and yet moving, too, just out of nowhere. Leo’s experience of gender - stab me in the heart already, god - and Leo and Joe’s last few scenes as they try to figure out what they can be to one another, and Leo and Helen’s quiet, calm, perfectly accepting relationship, the rhythm they’ve built with one another and the way they fit together so well. 😭😭😭
(I did NOT love the appearance of the n-word on page 147, used to describe a shade of brown. So FYI, that’s in there too.)
I guess I should say I find it wild I hadn’t read anything by Mary Renault before because this is so the type of book middle school me would have read on summer vacation, picking it out of the shelves of old books left at my grandparents’ cabin by aunts and uncles decades ago, paging through it while lying on the dock, just baking in the sun and being transported through words to some hot, sunny, long-lost time (and yes, like Elsie and that reviewer, probably missing a decent percentage of the allusions and implications).
I also found the ending fascinating - both Elsie’s, and where things end for Leo. There’s a lot of ambiguity between Leo-as-boy and Leo-as-woman near the end of the book, and it was very funny to then roll right into Renault’s Afterward, in which she wrote that, 40 years on (ie, 1983), she found the ending silly. And she was right to say it! But in any case it’s the resolution of a plotline about gender/sexuality/the intersection thereof when you live in a ~society~, which in some ways hasn’t changed much since the 1930s and is interesting any way you slice it.
In addition to being a great summer vacation book I think this would probably be a great book club book because there’s so much more I want to mull over that I really can’t without discussing spoilers. (And Renault gets uh spicy about the word “gay,” pride parades, etc in the Afterward which, love a controversial author quote to get the conversation flowing haha.)
Which btw, why didn’t anyone say Mary Renault was *funny*?? I checked this book out from the library because it was the only physical copy of a Renault book that was readily available. Having read the plot synopsis/various reviews of The Charioteer and her Alexander books, I assumed this was going to be some oblique, mostly depressing mid-century slog. As it turns out, it’s the book Renault wrote after reading and apparently heartlessly laughing through (her words, not mine!) The Well of Loneliness, so comedy is the name of the game.
It starts with timid, sheltered seventeen-year-old Elsie being encouraged by her very horny doctor (“Should he kiss her? he was thinking. It seemed a shame not to; it would probably make her happy for the rest of the day. She was looking much less unattractive already. All she wanted was a tonic, the sort that didn’t come out of a bottle.”) to live a little. So Elsie, taking the advice of the man she loves (they’ve only met 3-4 times, but in her defense she reads a lot of romance novels), runs away from home to go stay with her sister, boyish Leo, who was kicked out by their parents several years earlier under mysterious circumstances.
Leo, as it turns out, has been writing westerns under a pen name and lives on a houseboat with beautiful artist Helen. Leo and Helen are the friendly young ladies of the title - and here a moment of silence for Henry Reed, a reviewer who per this book’s Afterward to the Vintage Edition complained, “One cannot even tell precisely *how* friendly the young ladies have been to each other.” Henry, buddy, one definitely can.
Of course, the horny doctor shows up at Leo and Helen’s place and decides they ALSO need a taste of his particular medicine, and hijinks (and drama) ensue.
Funny, lazy, playful, ironic - and yet moving, too, just out of nowhere. Leo’s experience of gender - stab me in the heart already, god - and Leo and Joe’s last few scenes as they try to figure out what they can be to one another, and Leo and Helen’s quiet, calm, perfectly accepting relationship, the rhythm they’ve built with one another and the way they fit together so well. 😭😭😭
(I did NOT love the appearance of the n-word on page 147, used to describe a shade of brown. So FYI, that’s in there too.)
I guess I should say I find it wild I hadn’t read anything by Mary Renault before because this is so the type of book middle school me would have read on summer vacation, picking it out of the shelves of old books left at my grandparents’ cabin by aunts and uncles decades ago, paging through it while lying on the dock, just baking in the sun and being transported through words to some hot, sunny, long-lost time (and yes, like Elsie and that reviewer, probably missing a decent percentage of the allusions and implications).
I also found the ending fascinating - both Elsie’s, and where things end for Leo. There’s a lot of ambiguity between Leo-as-boy and Leo-as-woman near the end of the book, and it was very funny to then roll right into Renault’s Afterward, in which she wrote that, 40 years on (ie, 1983), she found the ending silly. And she was right to say it! But in any case it’s the resolution of a plotline about gender/sexuality/the intersection thereof when you live in a ~society~, which in some ways hasn’t changed much since the 1930s and is interesting any way you slice it.
In addition to being a great summer vacation book I think this would probably be a great book club book because there’s so much more I want to mull over that I really can’t without discussing spoilers. (And Renault gets uh spicy about the word “gay,” pride parades, etc in the Afterward which, love a controversial author quote to get the conversation flowing haha.)
June 10, 2024
Theoretically, I was going to love this book: bohemian bisexuals on a houseboat on the Thames in the 1930s: one of them (Leo) is a butch writer of trashy Westerns, the other (Helen) a kind and witty nurse. They take in Leo’s naive sister Elsie who ran away from home after falling in love with the ridiculous womanizer, Peter. Leo and Helen’s neighbor, Joe, is an adventurer and writer and is in love with Leo. Chaos, partner swapping, and heartbreak ensue.
So frustrating. Some of the writing was beautiful and some moments had me thinking I would love this book. Unfortunately some of the concepts of gender and sexuality feel super outdated to me. Obviously, this book was written in 1944, but I think this one aged particularly badly. Dishonorable mention to the completely uncalled for n-word and to Renault’s afterword written in 1980 with some very bad opinions about the gay liberation movement.
So frustrating. Some of the writing was beautiful and some moments had me thinking I would love this book. Unfortunately some of the concepts of gender and sexuality feel super outdated to me. Obviously, this book was written in 1944, but I think this one aged particularly badly. Dishonorable mention to the completely uncalled for n-word and to Renault’s afterword written in 1980 with some very bad opinions about the gay liberation movement.
October 15, 2023
Unterhaltsamer als jede Netflix Serie am Wochenende, ein weiteres Highlight der Entdeckungen Reihe
October 11, 2023
Nicht mein Lieblingsbuch von Mary Renault, aber wie immer eine spannede Charakterstudie mit offenem Ende. Wie bei jedem von Renaults Büchern bleibt vieles ungesagt und passiert zwischen den Zeilen (sie konnte zu ihrer Zeit schlecht offensichtlicher schreiben), und es bleibt dem Leser überlassen, was man von den Charakteren hält und wie es für sie weitergehen wird. Wie alle ihre Bücher ist auch dieses seiner Zeit weit vorraus gewesen: hier mit zwei bisexuellen Frauen, die in einer offenen Beziehung leben.
Elsie, jung, naiv, behütet aufgewachsen, kommt vom Land in die Großstadt, erlebt ihren ersten Liebeskummer fand ich sehr gut gezeichnet.
Leo, die wir heute vermutlich genderfluid lesen würden, die sich nie wirklich in ihrer Haut wohl fühlt und versuchen muss, in den Restriktionen ihrer Zeit sich selbst zu leben tat mir sehr oft Leid, aber ich glaube für einige Leser wird sie zu unverständlich bleiben. Ihre Beziehung zu Helen fand ich sehr interessant.
Peter, war in seiner furchtbar selbstverliebten jnd geblendeten Art eine herrliche Satire aud sämtliche Männer, die ach so gerne queere Beziehung kleinreden oder erst gar nicht sehen, aeil sie so geblendet von ihrem Glauben sind, dass jede Frau nur auf den richtigen Mann (in Peters Fall narürlich immer er selbst) warten. Er war so schrecklich unausstehlich, wirklich perfekt getroffen.
Die Übersetzung war manchmal leider etwas sehr altbacken, und ich fürchte einiges wird in der Übersetzung verloren gegangen sein (Elsie sagt zB irgendwann nichtsahnend, dass ihre Schwester an vielen "queer things" Interesse hat, was auf deutsch leider nicht funktioniert). Trotzdem absolut lesenswert!
*Leseexemplar vom Verlag via NetGalley erhalten*
Elsie, jung, naiv, behütet aufgewachsen, kommt vom Land in die Großstadt, erlebt ihren ersten Liebeskummer fand ich sehr gut gezeichnet.
Leo, die wir heute vermutlich genderfluid lesen würden, die sich nie wirklich in ihrer Haut wohl fühlt und versuchen muss, in den Restriktionen ihrer Zeit sich selbst zu leben tat mir sehr oft Leid, aber ich glaube für einige Leser wird sie zu unverständlich bleiben. Ihre Beziehung zu Helen fand ich sehr interessant.
Peter, war in seiner furchtbar selbstverliebten jnd geblendeten Art eine herrliche Satire aud sämtliche Männer, die ach so gerne queere Beziehung kleinreden oder erst gar nicht sehen, aeil sie so geblendet von ihrem Glauben sind, dass jede Frau nur auf den richtigen Mann (in Peters Fall narürlich immer er selbst) warten. Er war so schrecklich unausstehlich, wirklich perfekt getroffen.
Die Übersetzung war manchmal leider etwas sehr altbacken, und ich fürchte einiges wird in der Übersetzung verloren gegangen sein (Elsie sagt zB irgendwann nichtsahnend, dass ihre Schwester an vielen "queer things" Interesse hat, was auf deutsch leider nicht funktioniert). Trotzdem absolut lesenswert!
*Leseexemplar vom Verlag via NetGalley erhalten*
February 25, 2022
Elsie decides on a whim that staying at home with her uninteresting and argumentative parents is not in her best interests, so she hunts down her sister’s address and goes off on an adventure to find her. What she finds is a shock, but an overall pleasant surprise, as her sister Leo lives on a quirky houseboat with her ‘friend’ Helen and they spend their days in blissful idleness broken only by friends dropping by or Helen going up to London to draw medical diagrams for a hospital. Leo meanwhile is trying (but not very hard) to write a book and spurred on by her friend Joe, the pair bounce ideas off each other with flirty contentment. The arrival of Elsie’s crush Peter stirs up strong and unpredictable feelings in all three women; will any of them ever be the same?
I couldn’t figure out in some parts of this book whether I just wasn’t understanding what was happening or whether it was just gently being implied so that I could draw my own conclusions (I suspect the latter for the time period it was written) but either way it was utterly charming and fun and certain elements of the story were delightfully heady and soporific.
I couldn’t figure out in some parts of this book whether I just wasn’t understanding what was happening or whether it was just gently being implied so that I could draw my own conclusions (I suspect the latter for the time period it was written) but either way it was utterly charming and fun and certain elements of the story were delightfully heady and soporific.
February 24, 2025
Zuerst dachte ich mh, ein Roman über ein naives Mädchen namens Elsie, das in seiner (zur Zeit, in der das spielt sehr verständlichen) patriarchalen, heteronormativen Denkweise und in der Ausrichtung auf den male gaze feststeckt. Und dann erweitert sich die Perspektive auf die junge bisexuelle Frau Leo, die in einer offenen, lesbischen Beziehung lebt und auch Verhältnisse mit Männern hat, wenn ihr eben danach ist. Das war wunderbar erfrischend und toll, zu sehen, dass es queeres Leben damals auch gab. Und dass es sogar literarisch verarbeitet werden konnte. Mary Renault war sowieso eine sehr interessante Persönlichkeit.
Manchmal war mir die Handlung zu sehr angedeutet, sodass ich nicht ganz gerafft habe, was passiert oder auch nicht passiert. Da hab ich mich dann gefühlt wie Elsie. Aber das ist wohl auch der Veröffentlichungszeit geschuldet. Außerdem kann es auch spannend sein, Dinge nur angedeutet zu lesen. Anders als in heutiger Literatur, wo oft vieles ganz schonungslos bis ins Detail beschrieben wird.
Manchmal war mir die Handlung zu sehr angedeutet, sodass ich nicht ganz gerafft habe, was passiert oder auch nicht passiert. Da hab ich mich dann gefühlt wie Elsie. Aber das ist wohl auch der Veröffentlichungszeit geschuldet. Außerdem kann es auch spannend sein, Dinge nur angedeutet zu lesen. Anders als in heutiger Literatur, wo oft vieles ganz schonungslos bis ins Detail beschrieben wird.
November 14, 2025
I too would like to live a bohemian existence on a houseboat, having jolly parties, writing westerns, and swimming in the river. This book didn't go where I expected it to go, however. Renault's story dragged slightly in the middle and I didn't care for that ending. I was still quite invested in these characters and enjoyed the writing immensely.
June 24, 2018
Le sigh. Like all of Renault's books, this is beautifully written with richly drawn characters, and it's not like the story is BAD, but it does take you in entirely unexpected directions in entirely unsatisfactory ways. Some of that may be to do with the sentiments of the time this was written, some with the author's personal experiences (which I take it some of this book was based on). Either way, it didn't work for me.
At the centre of this story is a pair of lesbian lovers in an open relationship, who live together on a houseboat on the Thames in (I guess) the mid-late 30s. I loved both of them and their entirely unapologetic, no-fuss way of life. I could have happily read a book about them and their relationship and yes, sure, by all means their casual hook-ups, as long as a) the central story was about them and b) the casual hook-ups included women. But that's not what this story is. Instead, the cast includes a younger sister coming to stay with them, a complicated relationship with a (male) fellow river dweller, and an absolutely insufferable douchenozzle of a young doctor who's made it his mission to "help" these women out with what he thinks is well-intended, careful psychological cultivation and what is in fact nothing but infuriating attempts at callous, clumsy and cluelessly harmful emotional manipulation. (The girls do make fun of him a lot but he's so completely oblivious and self-satisfied that he rarely ever notices, which rather takes the fun out of it.)
While the younger sister's painfully gauche, overly sentimental and entirely blind perspective is at least amusing to a degree, the amount of attention that was given to the titular ladies' relationships with men in general, and the two primary male characters of the novel, was frankly just frustrating, especially since there is next to no focus on the established relationship between the women (as another reviewer put it, it's a story about lesbians with no lesbianism). I particularly hated the way that Leo, a non-gender-conforming, down-to-earth, entirely self-made and self-confident woman, was slowly unravelled as the novel moved into its final third, and all the ways in which she'd previously subverted and casually poked fun at any attempt to "correct" her were eventually turned back on her as she fell disastrously apart over a guy. Barf.
I guess what it boils down to for me is that there are so few truly great novels about women loving women that when I come across one that had the potential to be one but ends up wasting it over a couple of idiot men, it's going to make me cross. JUST LET US HAVE GOOD F/F, FFS!
(Also the afterword revealed some pretty gross opinions of Renault's that I really wish I hadn't learned.)
At the centre of this story is a pair of lesbian lovers in an open relationship, who live together on a houseboat on the Thames in (I guess) the mid-late 30s. I loved both of them and their entirely unapologetic, no-fuss way of life. I could have happily read a book about them and their relationship and yes, sure, by all means their casual hook-ups, as long as a) the central story was about them and b) the casual hook-ups included women. But that's not what this story is. Instead, the cast includes a younger sister coming to stay with them, a complicated relationship with a (male) fellow river dweller, and an absolutely insufferable douchenozzle of a young doctor who's made it his mission to "help" these women out with what he thinks is well-intended, careful psychological cultivation and what is in fact nothing but infuriating attempts at callous, clumsy and cluelessly harmful emotional manipulation. (The girls do make fun of him a lot but he's so completely oblivious and self-satisfied that he rarely ever notices, which rather takes the fun out of it.)
While the younger sister's painfully gauche, overly sentimental and entirely blind perspective is at least amusing to a degree, the amount of attention that was given to the titular ladies' relationships with men in general, and the two primary male characters of the novel, was frankly just frustrating, especially since there is next to no focus on the established relationship between the women (as another reviewer put it, it's a story about lesbians with no lesbianism). I particularly hated the way that Leo, a non-gender-conforming, down-to-earth, entirely self-made and self-confident woman, was slowly unravelled as the novel moved into its final third, and all the ways in which she'd previously subverted and casually poked fun at any attempt to "correct" her were eventually turned back on her as she fell disastrously apart over a guy. Barf.
I guess what it boils down to for me is that there are so few truly great novels about women loving women that when I come across one that had the potential to be one but ends up wasting it over a couple of idiot men, it's going to make me cross. JUST LET US HAVE GOOD F/F, FFS!
(Also the afterword revealed some pretty gross opinions of Renault's that I really wish I hadn't learned.)
January 24, 2016
Groundbreaking, profound, intellectual, complicated, funny, thoughtful, and frustrating, but very worth reading! I bookmarked about a dozen pages of this book because the writing rang so true! I was surprised how accessible the language was in spite of being British.
Quote from the back cover: "Set in 1937...a romantic comedy of off-Bloomsbury bohemia...Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in the early 1940s, creating characters that are lighthearted, charming, and free-spirited partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness or Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. The result is a witty and stylish story that offers exceptional insight into the world of upcoming writers and artists in 1930s London, chronicling their rejection of society's established sexual mores and their heroic pursuit of art and life."
I may never read The Well of Loneliness or The Children's Hour.
Quote from the back cover: "Set in 1937...a romantic comedy of off-Bloomsbury bohemia...Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in the early 1940s, creating characters that are lighthearted, charming, and free-spirited partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness or Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. The result is a witty and stylish story that offers exceptional insight into the world of upcoming writers and artists in 1930s London, chronicling their rejection of society's established sexual mores and their heroic pursuit of art and life."
I may never read The Well of Loneliness or The Children's Hour.
January 11, 2008
I read this in 2005 and found it to be incredibly frustrating. For one thing, don't believe any of the blurbs on the back of the book - this book is neither a romance nor a comedy. It doesn't really have much at all to say about artists communities in the '30s. And for that matter, it doesn't really have that much to say about lesbian relationships either. The characters are mostly either dispicable or tragic.
After reading this, I wrote a long exposition of my problems with this book here: http://magnetgrrl.livejournal.com/132...
It's very spoilery.
After reading this, I wrote a long exposition of my problems with this book here: http://magnetgrrl.livejournal.com/132...
It's very spoilery.
November 23, 2015
Renault wrote this as a response to Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, as a much lighter, less doom-and-gloom story of lesbian life, set in 1930s Britain. It's definitely quirky and witty, but then my god it's wrenchingly sad. Like Renault's novel The Charioteer, this is a book that holds you and holds you and then in the final moments draws back and knifes you in the chest. It's not even the tragedy you would expect; it's somehow worse than that. Five stars. And five more stars for the scene where Leo(nora) shuts down a Freudian mansplainer by stealing his girlfriend.
April 15, 2024
Elsie Lane ist 17, unendlich naiv und wird von den Eltern streng kontrolliert, nachdem ihre 10 Jahre ältere Schwester Leonora vor Jahren aus dem Dorf in Cornwall flüchtete, um irgendwo „in Sünde“ zu leben. Als statt des erfahrenen Hausarztes dessen sehr junger Vertreter zu einem Hausbesuch bei den Lanes erscheint, setzt das eine Reihe dramatischer Ereignisse in Gang. Peter Bracknell hat offenbar nicht nur ein verdächtiges Interesse an zu jungen Frauen, sondern hält seine küchenpsychologischen Weisheiten für unentbehrlich für jede Frau, die seinen Weg kreuzt. Ohne ihn als Hobby-Therapeuten kann keine Frau vollständig sein. Indem Elsie „Leo“ auf einem Hausboot auf der Themse ausfindig macht und bei ihr einzieht, lenkt sie wie bei einer Fuchsjagd Peter auf die Spur der innigen Beziehung zwischen der sportlich-androgynen Leo, ihrer Gefährtin Helen und dem auf einer Flussinsel lebenden Joe, zu dem wiederum Leo eine zugleich berufliche Beziehung pflegt – beide sind Autoren. Durch Peters Auftritt gerät die für die Zeit der Handlung in den 30ern noch ungewohnte Lebensweise jenseits heterosexueller Beziehungen aus dem Tritt.
Für einen 1944 veröffentlichten Roman versammelt Mary Renault in „Freundliche junge Damen“ eine erstaunliche Vielfalt an Identitäten und Beziehungsebenen. Sehr gelungen fand ich die androgyne Leo und deren Leo-Sein, während Elsie und Peter in all ihrer klischeehaften Banalität für meinen Geschmack zu viel Raum erhielten. Dem Kultobjekt Hausboot auf britischen Flüssen und Kanälen wird leider weder die Beschreibung des Bootes im Roman gerecht noch das nichtssagende Cover der deutschen Ausgabe. Wenigstens den Fährmann, der die jungen Damen so "freundlich“ erlebt, hätte ich mir abgebildet gewünscht.
Fazit
Mit dem Wissen, dass 1945 Europa in Trümmern liegen und rein rechnerisch allein die Bevölkerungsentwicklung die heterosexuelle Alleinverdiener-Ehe in die Warteschleife schicken würde, wirkt Renaults Roman auf mich wie eine hochironische psychologische Studie zu Identität, Diversität und leider auch mangelnder Souveränität ihrer queeren Figuren. Da der Roman als Replik zu Radclyffe Halls "The Well of Lonliness" (1928) verfasst wurde, erschließt er sich vermutlich leichter nach dessen Lektüre und einem Blick in Renaults Biografie (Mary Renault: A Biography).
Für einen 1944 veröffentlichten Roman versammelt Mary Renault in „Freundliche junge Damen“ eine erstaunliche Vielfalt an Identitäten und Beziehungsebenen. Sehr gelungen fand ich die androgyne Leo und deren Leo-Sein, während Elsie und Peter in all ihrer klischeehaften Banalität für meinen Geschmack zu viel Raum erhielten. Dem Kultobjekt Hausboot auf britischen Flüssen und Kanälen wird leider weder die Beschreibung des Bootes im Roman gerecht noch das nichtssagende Cover der deutschen Ausgabe. Wenigstens den Fährmann, der die jungen Damen so "freundlich“ erlebt, hätte ich mir abgebildet gewünscht.
Fazit
Mit dem Wissen, dass 1945 Europa in Trümmern liegen und rein rechnerisch allein die Bevölkerungsentwicklung die heterosexuelle Alleinverdiener-Ehe in die Warteschleife schicken würde, wirkt Renaults Roman auf mich wie eine hochironische psychologische Studie zu Identität, Diversität und leider auch mangelnder Souveränität ihrer queeren Figuren. Da der Roman als Replik zu Radclyffe Halls "The Well of Lonliness" (1928) verfasst wurde, erschließt er sich vermutlich leichter nach dessen Lektüre und einem Blick in Renaults Biografie (Mary Renault: A Biography).
November 11, 2023
Die 17-jährige Elsie lebt in einem kleinen Ort in Cornwall, geht sonntags zur Messe und liest leidenschaftlich gern Liebesromane. Sie leidet unter der unglücklichen Ehe der Eltern und vermisst ihre große Schwester Leo, die schon vor vielen Jahren von zuhause abgehauen ist. Als Elsie den jungen Arzt Peter kennen lernt, ist sie sofort schwer verliebt. Peter schmeichelt ihr und ermutigt sie, ihre Schwester zu suchen. Leo wohnt mit ihrer Freundin Helen zusammen auf einem Hausboot auf der Themse und führt ein emanzipiertes und glückliches Leben als Romanschriftstellerin. Welcher Art die Beziehung der beiden zueinander ist, übersteigt Elsies Horizont jedoch, und stellt das spannendste Thema des 1944 erschienenen Romans dar. Interessant wird es, als Peter, der sich als manipulativer Hobbypsychologe erweist, zu Besuch kommt und versucht, die Frauen unter seine Kontrolle zu bringen.
Die Herausforderung für mich war zunächst, dass das Buch mit einer so schwachen Protagonistin aufwartet und es dauert, bis die Geschichte Fahrt auf nimmt. Elsie verhält sich ausgesprochen naiv und unerfahren für ihr Alter, regelmäßig ist sie schockiert oder bricht in Tränen aus. Zum Glück wechselt der Fokus jedoch zunehmend auf das Beziehungsgeflecht zwischen Leo, Helen, Peter sowie Joe, dem Nachbarn der „freundlichen jungen Damen“. Insgesamt ist besonders Leo als genderfluider Charakter interessant und in Anbetracht der Entstehungszeit unkonventionell.
Einige Handlungsweisen waren für mich zwar nicht nachvollziehbar und auch das Ende hätte mich wohl etwas ratlos zurückgelassen, würde nicht das Nachwort noch etwas biografischen Kontext ergänzen. Alles in allem handelt es sich jedoch um eine unterhaltsame Geschichte, die damals übliche Vorstellungen von Geschlecht und Beziehungen auf den Kopf stellt und ihrer Zeit damit weit voraus ist.
Die Herausforderung für mich war zunächst, dass das Buch mit einer so schwachen Protagonistin aufwartet und es dauert, bis die Geschichte Fahrt auf nimmt. Elsie verhält sich ausgesprochen naiv und unerfahren für ihr Alter, regelmäßig ist sie schockiert oder bricht in Tränen aus. Zum Glück wechselt der Fokus jedoch zunehmend auf das Beziehungsgeflecht zwischen Leo, Helen, Peter sowie Joe, dem Nachbarn der „freundlichen jungen Damen“. Insgesamt ist besonders Leo als genderfluider Charakter interessant und in Anbetracht der Entstehungszeit unkonventionell.
Einige Handlungsweisen waren für mich zwar nicht nachvollziehbar und auch das Ende hätte mich wohl etwas ratlos zurückgelassen, würde nicht das Nachwort noch etwas biografischen Kontext ergänzen. Alles in allem handelt es sich jedoch um eine unterhaltsame Geschichte, die damals übliche Vorstellungen von Geschlecht und Beziehungen auf den Kopf stellt und ihrer Zeit damit weit voraus ist.
January 1, 2018
"Stifled by life with her bickering parents in a bleak Cornish village, Elsie Lane flees to London to find her sister Leonora who escaped eight years earlier.
"But there are surprises in store for conventional Elsie: not only does Leo live on a houseboat, she writes Westerns for a living and shares her boat -- and her bed -- with the beautiful Helen.
"Elsie's arrival is the first in a series of events that will set Leo and Helen's contented life spiralling away from cosy domesticity. Soon a handsome young doctor pays a visit, turning his attention from one 'friendly' young lady to the next and the delicate calm is broken -- with results unforeseen by all.
"Mary Renault write this delightfully provocative novel in 1943, partly in answer to the despair of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness>/i>. The result is this stylish social comedy set in the 1930s."
~~back cover
Sometimes I wonder if the people who write back cover blurbs ever actually read the book they're distilling to try and tempt readers to buy the book! This person starts out well enough: the first part of the book are indeed in depth portrayals of Elsie and the spirit-breaking atmosphere she lives in with her constantly bickering parents. And she does indeed manage to escape and run to her sister. And Leo indeed does write Westerns for a living, and she and Helen do indeed both live quite happily on the houseboat. But there the resemblance ends, at least imho it does.
Poor Elsie has been aggressively sheltered by a mother who lives in a fantasy world, and thus remains an unworldly child at 17. Helen and Leo do their best to gently open her eyes -- a very kind thing to do as Elsie's presence does indeed completely upend their comfortable calm existence.
Many threads weave in and out of this tale: Elsie's "love" for the smug insufferable young doctor, and of course she cannot see him as he is but as her knight in shining armor & her future lover. Makes me want to grind my teeth together! And Leo & Helen's relationship: are they or aren't they? Other reviewers have been certain they are, but as the story's written it's not clear. And then there's Joe: another writer (though not of Westerns) who lives on an island not far from the houseboat; he and Leo are very good friends, and Leo relates to him like another man would. And of course the reader wonders: is it really love? On his part? On hers?
This edition contains an afterword by the author, written exactly 50 years after the novel was first published. It annoyed me immensely at first: [spoiler]: "Leo and Jose have both been credited with reasonably good intelligence. He at least, the brighter of the two, would surely have had sense enough, in the sober light of the morning after, to steer them clear of such inevitable disaster. Sexual harmony apart, one cannot contemplate without a shudder their domestic life, hitherto so well arranged. Of course, more doomed and irresponsible unions happen in real life every day, but it is naive to present them as happy endings." At that point I wanted to throw the book (and the author) against the wall in pure frustration.
I think the ending remains undelineated, and I thought that was a deliberate construction by the author to get the reader to examine their responses to the novel. It certainly caused me to realize that, in spite of my cynicalness about men and their devious ways, I usually root for the HEA ending. And here's the author saying "No no -- people don't change, people don't ever grab for the brass ring and go to great lengths to make a relationship (marriage) work." I suppose that's the author's philosophy of life -- her description of the Lanes' marriage makes that excruciatingly clear: "The truth was that they had never loved one another, only images of their own devising, built up from books and the romantic conventions of their young day; no moment of pitiful, of humorous, of self-forgetting light had ever revealed either of them to the other, for the passion of mind, or even of the body, was lacking which might have kindled the spark. So Maude did not mellow Arthur, but rather serrated his edges; and Arthur did not temper or sharpen Maude, but on the contrary led her to associate logical thinking with coldness and disillusion, sentimentality with kindness and faith. Having no trust in one another's fundamentals, it was hardly surprising that thy felt no eagerness to concede in little things, such as the arrangement of rooms, or meals, or social engagements; their disagreements in these matters, like fragments of a cracked mirror, reflected in miniature their central dissatisfaction, but were too trivial and too hopeless to bring their back to it." And evidently the author assumes that that's the template for marriage -- Joe & Leo's "reasonably good intelligence" apparently of no avail. She certainly has a jaundiced view of marriage, doesn't she?
On the other hand, if it's assumed that Helen and Leo are, and if you think that sexual orientation is a function of genetics, then perhaps it's not possible to change -- perhaps the brass ring will always be missed under those circumstances, and if that's the case, then the author's logical, clinical assessment of Joe and Leo's probable success as a couple is very true.
I like this book very much, in fact I will probably reread it. I think it's one of those books that is so well written that different things pop out to the reader each time it's reread, and since I'm still turning this one over in my mind several days after finishing it, I think the book deserves another go.
"But there are surprises in store for conventional Elsie: not only does Leo live on a houseboat, she writes Westerns for a living and shares her boat -- and her bed -- with the beautiful Helen.
"Elsie's arrival is the first in a series of events that will set Leo and Helen's contented life spiralling away from cosy domesticity. Soon a handsome young doctor pays a visit, turning his attention from one 'friendly' young lady to the next and the delicate calm is broken -- with results unforeseen by all.
"Mary Renault write this delightfully provocative novel in 1943, partly in answer to the despair of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness>/i>. The result is this stylish social comedy set in the 1930s."
~~back cover
Sometimes I wonder if the people who write back cover blurbs ever actually read the book they're distilling to try and tempt readers to buy the book! This person starts out well enough: the first part of the book are indeed in depth portrayals of Elsie and the spirit-breaking atmosphere she lives in with her constantly bickering parents. And she does indeed manage to escape and run to her sister. And Leo indeed does write Westerns for a living, and she and Helen do indeed both live quite happily on the houseboat. But there the resemblance ends, at least imho it does.
Poor Elsie has been aggressively sheltered by a mother who lives in a fantasy world, and thus remains an unworldly child at 17. Helen and Leo do their best to gently open her eyes -- a very kind thing to do as Elsie's presence does indeed completely upend their comfortable calm existence.
Many threads weave in and out of this tale: Elsie's "love" for the smug insufferable young doctor, and of course she cannot see him as he is but as her knight in shining armor & her future lover. Makes me want to grind my teeth together! And Leo & Helen's relationship: are they or aren't they? Other reviewers have been certain they are, but as the story's written it's not clear. And then there's Joe: another writer (though not of Westerns) who lives on an island not far from the houseboat; he and Leo are very good friends, and Leo relates to him like another man would. And of course the reader wonders: is it really love? On his part? On hers?
This edition contains an afterword by the author, written exactly 50 years after the novel was first published. It annoyed me immensely at first: [spoiler]: "Leo and Jose have both been credited with reasonably good intelligence. He at least, the brighter of the two, would surely have had sense enough, in the sober light of the morning after, to steer them clear of such inevitable disaster. Sexual harmony apart, one cannot contemplate without a shudder their domestic life, hitherto so well arranged. Of course, more doomed and irresponsible unions happen in real life every day, but it is naive to present them as happy endings." At that point I wanted to throw the book (and the author) against the wall in pure frustration.
I think the ending remains undelineated, and I thought that was a deliberate construction by the author to get the reader to examine their responses to the novel. It certainly caused me to realize that, in spite of my cynicalness about men and their devious ways, I usually root for the HEA ending. And here's the author saying "No no -- people don't change, people don't ever grab for the brass ring and go to great lengths to make a relationship (marriage) work." I suppose that's the author's philosophy of life -- her description of the Lanes' marriage makes that excruciatingly clear: "The truth was that they had never loved one another, only images of their own devising, built up from books and the romantic conventions of their young day; no moment of pitiful, of humorous, of self-forgetting light had ever revealed either of them to the other, for the passion of mind, or even of the body, was lacking which might have kindled the spark. So Maude did not mellow Arthur, but rather serrated his edges; and Arthur did not temper or sharpen Maude, but on the contrary led her to associate logical thinking with coldness and disillusion, sentimentality with kindness and faith. Having no trust in one another's fundamentals, it was hardly surprising that thy felt no eagerness to concede in little things, such as the arrangement of rooms, or meals, or social engagements; their disagreements in these matters, like fragments of a cracked mirror, reflected in miniature their central dissatisfaction, but were too trivial and too hopeless to bring their back to it." And evidently the author assumes that that's the template for marriage -- Joe & Leo's "reasonably good intelligence" apparently of no avail. She certainly has a jaundiced view of marriage, doesn't she?
On the other hand, if it's assumed that Helen and Leo are, and if you think that sexual orientation is a function of genetics, then perhaps it's not possible to change -- perhaps the brass ring will always be missed under those circumstances, and if that's the case, then the author's logical, clinical assessment of Joe and Leo's probable success as a couple is very true.
I like this book very much, in fact I will probably reread it. I think it's one of those books that is so well written that different things pop out to the reader each time it's reread, and since I'm still turning this one over in my mind several days after finishing it, I think the book deserves another go.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 20, 2021
I found this book infuriating at times. What, exactly, is the relationship between Leo and Helen? I was promised wlw, but if that was the case, then theirs must have been an open relationship, since they constantly flirted and made out with men.
Part of the reason why I found it all so maddening is because the beginning held so much promise. The middle, however, lagged terribly. The ending (the last fifty pages or so) were tender and heartfelt.
I shall read more of Renault's work (I own some of her other novels), and I hope those won't be marred by the same defects.
Part of the reason why I found it all so maddening is because the beginning held so much promise. The middle, however, lagged terribly. The ending (the last fifty pages or so) were tender and heartfelt.
I shall read more of Renault's work (I own some of her other novels), and I hope those won't be marred by the same defects.
December 30, 2018
I totally get why a lot of queer folks hate Mary Renault. She's not the poster girl for queer positivity, coming up with lines like
"For another thing, I don't feel separate from the herd, if by the herd you mean ordinary people and not public mobs, as I suppose you do. I like them. Why should they pamper oddities, anyway? It's they who are in charge of evolution. They think it's better not to be odd, as far as they bother to think at all, and they're quite right. There are shoals of women made up pretty much like me, but a lot haven't noticed and most of the rest prefer to look the other way, and it's probably very sensible of them..." (178, Leo speaking).
Gee whiz.
But if you accept the fact that Renault's always gonna be kind of ambivalent and an ass, it's an interesting story. I had mixed feelings on it. I think perhaps the best way to go about this is to go character by character. Note--this review has mild spoilers from here on out.
Elsie
The naive younger sister. Every time she had a POV section or a scene was focused on her, I nearly died of secondhand embarrassment. At the same time I wish she'd had a more satisfactory ending--the second half of the book is much more about literally everyone else, and I'd invested time in Elsie! Should have gotten a better return.
Leo
Leo reminds me of my older sister and, at the same time, of myself. My older sister bc I get how Elsie feels towards her--she's this mountain of energized maturity, incomprehensible, untouched by the world's troubles, at least as far as Elsie can tell. Myself bc she's a butch bisexual (rare in lit but not that rare at all irl) and it's clear that she has complicated feelings about her own womanhood--sometimes embracing it, sometimes using it as a weapon, sometimes casually casting it aside to play the boy. I love when her more sapphic side shines thru, especially that brief scene with Norah, oof. When her het side shines thru things tend to go sour fast.
NOT THAT BEING BI IS ABOUT BEING HALF HET AND HALF GAY JUST FOR THE RECORD I DO NOT ESPOUSE THAT OPINION. moving on...
Helen
The composed, unaffected, feminine bisexual. I was gonna say "femme" but I know some ppl say if you ever use your femininity to attract men you can't use that label and she certainly does so while I get more of a femme vibe from her bc she's clearly committed to Leo and not attached to any of the men she attracts, I guess it's not the best descriptor. Oh, btw, Leo and Helen basically have an open partnership going--they can hook up with whoever but they come home to each other. Which I thought was kind of cool.
Tho I can also see how this aspect already could annoy some readers, given that I've seen it categorized as "lesbian fiction", and it's really not.
Peter
He sucks.
But it's like a trainwreck. You have to watch.
And apparently if you're SOME ppl you have to make out with him. I would not make that choice.
I hope Norah breaks up with him before it's too late...
Joe
Liked Joe at first, didn't like him later. He goes from your cool straight friend to a typical lovestruck dude and I did not enjoy the metamorphosis. He REMINDS ME OF CERTAIN PPL. I know I shouldn't cast stones but I have little respect for men in fiction who can't bear to keep a relationship platonic.
The Ending
If I actually end up doing my honors project, there are certain sections--for example, that doozy of a quote above--that could be very useful. At any rate, this is a kind of depressing but also kind of fun book, and I love the fact that it mostly takes place on a houseboat.
Apparently the Afterwards are some kind of a trip but I'm not reading them right now. I think the more I read of Renault the more critical of her I get--but at the same time, I have been reading her books in reverse chronological order so far, so maybe that was inevitable.
"For another thing, I don't feel separate from the herd, if by the herd you mean ordinary people and not public mobs, as I suppose you do. I like them. Why should they pamper oddities, anyway? It's they who are in charge of evolution. They think it's better not to be odd, as far as they bother to think at all, and they're quite right. There are shoals of women made up pretty much like me, but a lot haven't noticed and most of the rest prefer to look the other way, and it's probably very sensible of them..." (178, Leo speaking).
Gee whiz.
But if you accept the fact that Renault's always gonna be kind of ambivalent and an ass, it's an interesting story. I had mixed feelings on it. I think perhaps the best way to go about this is to go character by character. Note--this review has mild spoilers from here on out.
Elsie
The naive younger sister. Every time she had a POV section or a scene was focused on her, I nearly died of secondhand embarrassment. At the same time I wish she'd had a more satisfactory ending--the second half of the book is much more about literally everyone else, and I'd invested time in Elsie! Should have gotten a better return.
Leo
Leo reminds me of my older sister and, at the same time, of myself. My older sister bc I get how Elsie feels towards her--she's this mountain of energized maturity, incomprehensible, untouched by the world's troubles, at least as far as Elsie can tell. Myself bc she's a butch bisexual (rare in lit but not that rare at all irl) and it's clear that she has complicated feelings about her own womanhood--sometimes embracing it, sometimes using it as a weapon, sometimes casually casting it aside to play the boy. I love when her more sapphic side shines thru, especially that brief scene with Norah, oof. When her het side shines thru things tend to go sour fast.
NOT THAT BEING BI IS ABOUT BEING HALF HET AND HALF GAY JUST FOR THE RECORD I DO NOT ESPOUSE THAT OPINION. moving on...
Helen
The composed, unaffected, feminine bisexual. I was gonna say "femme" but I know some ppl say if you ever use your femininity to attract men you can't use that label and she certainly does so while I get more of a femme vibe from her bc she's clearly committed to Leo and not attached to any of the men she attracts, I guess it's not the best descriptor. Oh, btw, Leo and Helen basically have an open partnership going--they can hook up with whoever but they come home to each other. Which I thought was kind of cool.
Tho I can also see how this aspect already could annoy some readers, given that I've seen it categorized as "lesbian fiction", and it's really not.
Peter
He sucks.
But it's like a trainwreck. You have to watch.
And apparently if you're SOME ppl you have to make out with him. I would not make that choice.
I hope Norah breaks up with him before it's too late...
Joe
Liked Joe at first, didn't like him later. He goes from your cool straight friend to a typical lovestruck dude and I did not enjoy the metamorphosis. He REMINDS ME OF CERTAIN PPL. I know I shouldn't cast stones but I have little respect for men in fiction who can't bear to keep a relationship platonic.
The Ending
If I actually end up doing my honors project, there are certain sections--for example, that doozy of a quote above--that could be very useful. At any rate, this is a kind of depressing but also kind of fun book, and I love the fact that it mostly takes place on a houseboat.
Apparently the Afterwards are some kind of a trip but I'm not reading them right now. I think the more I read of Renault the more critical of her I get--but at the same time, I have been reading her books in reverse chronological order so far, so maybe that was inevitable.
April 18, 2017
Having read this book in a little under twenty-four hours I feel as if I've over-eaten. The Friendly Young Ladies has a lot of over-wrought emotions for a book that was apparently meant to be a lighter response to the equally over-wrought The Well of Loneliness. And if The Friendly Young Ladies is meant to be a less despairing book than The Well, I'm not quite sure I can see it.
The characters of Elsie and Peter are humorous in their absolute inability to understand anything that goes on around them. I'm not sure whether the reticence with which they're treated by everyone is because Renault was writing in 1944, when some things were unsayable, or because a certain reticence was just characteristic of the English middle-class, but I did long for someone to speak to them with a bit of blunt honesty.
As for the lesbian relationship at the centre of the book, it's depressing. I understand that Renault did not see herself as 'lesbian' and was appalled by anything that approached a 'gay rights' movement. But I'm not convinced by her comparing sexual intercourse to mountain-climbing, and the idea that sometimes you just have to go on 'with someone you trust at the other end of the rope'. I'm horribly afraid that the central message of the book is that a lesbian just needs the love of a good man in order to become a real woman.
Renault's afterword to this edition, written in 1983, acknowledges that the ending didn't work and that the idea of Leo and Joe living happily ever after was ludicrous. But I wish Leo and Helen could have lived happily ever after which, some eighty-odd years later, would now be possible because of the gay rights movement that Renault despised.
I've given this four stars as a useful historical source. But I'm glad that 'congregated homosexuals wav[ed] banners' - even if Renault turned her back on them.
The characters of Elsie and Peter are humorous in their absolute inability to understand anything that goes on around them. I'm not sure whether the reticence with which they're treated by everyone is because Renault was writing in 1944, when some things were unsayable, or because a certain reticence was just characteristic of the English middle-class, but I did long for someone to speak to them with a bit of blunt honesty.
As for the lesbian relationship at the centre of the book, it's depressing. I understand that Renault did not see herself as 'lesbian' and was appalled by anything that approached a 'gay rights' movement. But I'm not convinced by her comparing sexual intercourse to mountain-climbing, and the idea that sometimes you just have to go on 'with someone you trust at the other end of the rope'. I'm horribly afraid that the central message of the book is that a lesbian just needs the love of a good man in order to become a real woman.
Renault's afterword to this edition, written in 1983, acknowledges that the ending didn't work and that the idea of Leo and Joe living happily ever after was ludicrous. But I wish Leo and Helen could have lived happily ever after which, some eighty-odd years later, would now be possible because of the gay rights movement that Renault despised.
I've given this four stars as a useful historical source. But I'm glad that 'congregated homosexuals wav[ed] banners' - even if Renault turned her back on them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 29, 2020
I would give this novel more than five stars if I could, it was all that I love in a good book. It was understated and emotionally mature, sometimes written in a way so that the real happening was between the lines, similar to Mollie Keane’s Good Behaviour.
It deals with the lives and nuances of sexual orientation of a small nucleus of characters in a bohemian setting in 1937, both through the eyes of a naive over romantic teenager and those of her older sister and her female partner who live on a houseboat on the Thames, who in turn are to react to the attentions the self satisfied and patronising young doctor who thinks he can conquer any attractive young woman in a skirt (or trousers as it turns out) and the rugged capable American writer who lives on an island nearby.
The setting is lovely, with memorable descriptions of the surroundings on the Thames and balmy summer nights which gives the novel a dreamy feel contrasting delightfully with the down to earth river characters and the tough lifestyle of living on a boat. I felt I really knew the characters well, they were so thoroughly rounded off. For those who like retro nostalgia this novel obliges, plus there are discussions on the art of writing and descriptions of nursing and hospitals of that time. And pubs, and the West End. Totally charming and perceptive, I was sorry to come to the end, which many have found disappointing and which the author later came to regret, but it didn’t matter to me, I enjoyed the process of getting there so much.
It deals with the lives and nuances of sexual orientation of a small nucleus of characters in a bohemian setting in 1937, both through the eyes of a naive over romantic teenager and those of her older sister and her female partner who live on a houseboat on the Thames, who in turn are to react to the attentions the self satisfied and patronising young doctor who thinks he can conquer any attractive young woman in a skirt (or trousers as it turns out) and the rugged capable American writer who lives on an island nearby.
The setting is lovely, with memorable descriptions of the surroundings on the Thames and balmy summer nights which gives the novel a dreamy feel contrasting delightfully with the down to earth river characters and the tough lifestyle of living on a boat. I felt I really knew the characters well, they were so thoroughly rounded off. For those who like retro nostalgia this novel obliges, plus there are discussions on the art of writing and descriptions of nursing and hospitals of that time. And pubs, and the West End. Totally charming and perceptive, I was sorry to come to the end, which many have found disappointing and which the author later came to regret, but it didn’t matter to me, I enjoyed the process of getting there so much.
March 1, 2021
mi opinión de tres pesos que absolutamente nadie ha pedido: Dos amigas es una novela que aunque en apariencia es sobre tres personajes, en la profundidad convergen más personajes como Peter y Joe. Dos amigas está hermosamente escrito, cuenta con profundos detalles, sin embargo una tiene la sensación de que tiene más protagonismo la relación entre las parejas heterosexuales que entre las mismas Helen y Leo, sin embargo si lo pensamos detenidamente ya era demasiado provocativo en los años 40’s insinuar la relación entre ellas dos.
Siendo en parte muy honesta, es un libro en el que me ha costado muchísimo tener un ritmo. En momentos pensé en dejarlo principalmente porque perdí la costumbre a valorar los detalles en los que la escritora presta notable atención. Cabe señalar que si bien, no me ha encantado dos amigas, si me gustaría mucho leer más de Mary Renault y descubrir a una escritora clásica de la comunidad LGBTTTIPQA para conocer cada matiz con el que ve y escribe sus personajes.
En realidad quiero darle 3 estrellas 🌟 🌟 🌟 y la mitad de otra pero no supe hacerlo
Siendo en parte muy honesta, es un libro en el que me ha costado muchísimo tener un ritmo. En momentos pensé en dejarlo principalmente porque perdí la costumbre a valorar los detalles en los que la escritora presta notable atención. Cabe señalar que si bien, no me ha encantado dos amigas, si me gustaría mucho leer más de Mary Renault y descubrir a una escritora clásica de la comunidad LGBTTTIPQA para conocer cada matiz con el que ve y escribe sus personajes.
En realidad quiero darle 3 estrellas 🌟 🌟 🌟 y la mitad de otra pero no supe hacerlo
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April 5, 2022The pacing in this novel ebbs and flows, but it's generally very enjoyable. I picked this up after reading The King Must Die, her breakthrough historical novel retelling the myth of Theseus. The Friendly Young Ladies (her third novel, I think) feels like an earlier work in showing offer her literary brilliance. In The King Must Die she has a surer sense of letting her storytelling take precedence and using her excellent writing to support it.
I had the fortunate coincidence to read this book at the same time I was reading Understanding Girls with ADHD. I could be wrong, but it jumped out at me that the character Elsie, based on Mary Renault's younger sister, had ADHD falling on the shy, distracted end of the spectrum. This was hard to take because the narrator has a great time making fun of Elsie and her timid efforts to face the world. It seemed almost cruel. I wonder if Mary Renault ever really understood her sibling.
I had the fortunate coincidence to read this book at the same time I was reading Understanding Girls with ADHD. I could be wrong, but it jumped out at me that the character Elsie, based on Mary Renault's younger sister, had ADHD falling on the shy, distracted end of the spectrum. This was hard to take because the narrator has a great time making fun of Elsie and her timid efforts to face the world. It seemed almost cruel. I wonder if Mary Renault ever really understood her sibling.
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