The Friendly Young Ladies

By: Mary Renault

Narrated by: Imogen Church

Elsie, sheltered and naive, is seventeen and unhappy. Stifled by life with her bickering parents in a bleak Cornish village, she falls in love with the first presentable young man she meets - Peter, an ambitious London doctor. On his advice she runs away from home and goes to live with her sister Leonora, who escaped eight years earlier.

But there are surprises in store for conventional Elsie as her sister has a rather bohemian lifestyle: not only does Leo live in a houseboat on the Thames where she writes Westerns for a living, she shares her boat - and her bed - with Helen. When Peter pays a visit, turning his attention from one 'friendly young lady' to the next, he disturbs the calm for each of them - with results unforeseen by all . . .

Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in 1943 partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. The result is this witty and stylish social comedy.

©1972 Mary Renault (P)2014 Audible Studios

Critic reviews

"Undeniably charming . . . has an enormous nostalgic attractiveness" (New Yorker)
"Written with rare insight" (Boston Globe)

Exquisite lesbian story from the 1940s.

Very, very well-written. Mary Renault's prose is sharp, controlled, and never wastes a word — she draws her characters with real psychological depth rather than leaning on melodrama. The relationship between Leo and Helen is handled with surprising warmth and matter-of-factness for a novel of its era, never treated as a problem to be solved or a tragedy waiting to happen. It's a quietly groundbreaking, deeply humane read. Worth your time.

Simultaneously spectacular and nuanced reading

an overlooked early masterpiece. Tender yet unsentimental, the book looks directly into the heart of love lived freely, with charming details and insight into an age past.