Monday 8 March 2010

The friendly young ladies (Renault) 147



I read The friendly young ladies, the only Mary Renault published as a Virago Modern Classic, at the beginning of last year, shortly before I embarked on this challenge. But I remember greatly enjoying it.

The story of Elsie, a young Cornish girl who is stifled by living in a small village with her parents, it relates what happens, when on the advice of a man who she has fallen in love with, she runs away to London to live with her sister. Her sister's life bears a huge contrast to Elsie's convention existence - Leo lives on a houseboat with another woman and writes Westerns for a living. The book reveals what happens when Elsie encounters this bohemian lifestyle and how it changes her and in turn she changes Leo. Apparently Renault wrote this in part as a response to Radclyffe Hall's The well of loneliness which is a much more intense and depressing book about lesbianism, and I think she succeeded in showing a different side to it.

The edition I had from the library was the most recent one, which I feel really evokes the charming, holiday-like nature of the book. Do check this one out! 3.5*

8 comments:

  1. I read The Friendly Young Ladies a few years ago and I really like it. Living on a barge and writing western novels for a living sounds great!

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  2. Even if I didn't already have All-Things-Virago on my TBR list, the cover of this one (the newest) is so completely delightful that I'd be tempted all the same!

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  3. Have you read any other Renault? The Friendly Young Ladies was good, but some of her other books are better to a power of ten. She's a favorite author of mine. :)

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  4. Vintage - I think it sounds like a wonderful life too!

    BIP - it fits in with a lot of the more recent Virago book covers doesn't it - I'm thinking of the Muriel Sparks and Barbara Pyms especially.

    Jenny - I hadn't come across any other Mary Renault books, mainly because this is the only one published as a VMC; I see you bought several in your recent bookbuying haul, so you'll have to let me know which ones are good!

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  5. I wish I hadn't come here because now I'll have to buy a copy of Friendly Young Ladies. :)

    I've read Renault's historical novels but had no idea she'd written anything else.

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  6. Frisbee - historical novels, how interesting!

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  7. Oh, I can tell you now. I love Mary Renault from way back. Read The Charioteer. I started my book blog, seriously, because I wanted to talk about The Charioteer and nobody else I knew had read it (still the case, sadly). I have some problems with it, but it's a very good book. That's the only one of her present-day (present to her) novels that I really like. Her other good ones are historical. The Mask of Apollo, which I read recently, was superb.

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  8. Jenny - I shall look out for it - it sounds intriguing. And what a good reason to start a book blog!

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