The Friendly Young Ladies
by Mary Renault
List Price:
Our Price: $6.95
You Save: $6.05 (47%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.20 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Mary RenaultEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-05-13
ISBN: 0375714219
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of The Friendly Young Ladies
Book Review: Suprising Fun -- if you just go with it
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book after being told Sarah Waters pilfered the charachters of Helen and Julia from "The Night Watch" from it. (To which I say, sort of, but with Waters, it's always more complex.)
The book starts slow. The first time I read it I skimmed the first 50 pages, covering a sweet, dull teen named Elsie. The book hits its stride when she runs away from home and to her sister Leo's home on the Thames. Leo's a 28(?) year-old tomboy who writes cowboy novels under the pen name Tex O'Hara. Easygoing and cool, she whiles away her days with her girlfriend (take note, Night Watch readers - named Helen!) on their little houseboat. The book is striking for its casual portrayal of the couple's lesbianism. It possesses a freedom and assurance that has not been doubled since. Nobody (thankfully) seems to give much of a damn about it - least of all the women themselves.
Renault throws in a twist with the sudden attraction between Leo and her male writing friend of many years, Joe. (She doesn't say it in the afterword but I suspect she did it to escape the censors and her book being banned like Radclyffe Hall's). But considering this book came out ONLY 15 YEARS after the soppish Well of Loneliness, it feels effervescent and postmodern. The ending is "silly," as Renault herself admitted, but this is still a cool, chill glass of the future. The afterword itself is worth the price of admission.
Summary of The Friendly Young Ladies
Set in 1937, The Friendly Young Ladies is a romantic comedy of off-Bloomsbury bohemia. Sheltered, na?ve, 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.
General Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in What's in my April 2008 bookbag
The Friendly Young Ladiesby Mary Renault
Vintage; Published: 2003-05-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.75
Price in other shops:
Books and Persons: Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908 to 1911by Arnold Bennett
Kessinger Publishing, LLC; Published: 2007-07-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $31.39
Price in other shops:
Garden Open Todayby Beverley Nichols
Timber Press, Incorporated; Published: 2002-06-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptileby Verlyn Klinkenborg
Vintage; Published: 2007-01-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.11
Price in other shops:
Rumpole and the Angel of Deathby John Mortimer
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1997-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.98
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin Modern Classics)by Muriel Spark
Penguin Classics; Published: 2000-02-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops:
The Moving Finger: A Miss Marple Mystery (Miss Marple Mysteries)by Agatha Christie
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers; Published: 2007-03-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.40
Price in other shops:
The Spoils of Poynton (Oxford World's Classics)by Henry James
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-03-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.05
Price in other shops:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics)by James Joyce
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-03-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
The World Without Usby Alan Weisman
Thomas Dunne Books; Published: 2007-07-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.55
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Nature of Alexanderby Mary Renault
Pantheon; Published: 1979-11-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.70
Price in other shops:
The Charioteerby Mary Renault
Vintage; Published: 2003-05-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.72
Price in other shops:
Mary Renault: A Biography (A Harvest Book)by David Sweetman
Harvest Books; Published: 1994-07-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.94
Price in other shops:
The Last of the Wineby Mary Renault
Vintage; Published: 2001-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.44
Price in other shops:
Fire from Heavenby Mary Renault
Vintage; Published: 2002-06-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: