Written in 1940, set in 1937. A character with gender uncertainty and fluid sexual orientation and 4 other characters among their family and friends. Two who most often misinterpret the others motives and three who get it right most of the time. Relationships are hard. And sometimes we may not want to know another's motive. Really enjoyed how the workings of each character's thoughts was portrayed. The dialog was also realistically difficult to understand--extraordinary really.
An off hand recommendation of molecular ecologist I follow on Twitter! I'd never heard of Mary Renault.
Contrary to the Goodreads Summary, I did not think this was a comedy. ( )

General information at Wikipedia, and readers' discussion at Goodreads.

Book download pdf (2021-03)
https://archive.org/details/middlemist00rena

This is a good review but the whole thing justifies a spoiler alert. It discloses too much that should unfold gradually on the reader.

https://theblankgarden.com/2020/12/23/review-the-friendly-young-ladies-by-mary-r...

Renault's biblieography:
https://tlockyer.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/the-works-of-mary-renault-1905-83/ ( )

Heh: seems like the character of Peter is an eternal type. ( )

Read, favourite. ( )

I read this book because I was reading reviews of the Well of Loneliness, and it was mentioned. In fact, the comment was something like 'oh God, the Well of Loneliness, it's so up itself and tortured and po faced and hilarious, it's such a shame it's the defining lesbian novel, the only good thing I can say about it is that it inspired Mary Renault to write The Friendly Young Ladies because she felt exactly the same way as me.' Which given Well is up there in my Favourite Books Ever was a bit of a red rag to a bull, but I like books that are in conversation with other books, and I like queer books that aren't modern queer books and so shed a different light on things, and I like buying books WLOG. So I bought it.

It is definitely in conversation with Well. There are some really wonderfully crafted snarks, where the heroines will be given feedlines to Angst, and then say very prosaically 'I expect most relationships are unusual when one knows enough about them. We're pretty well used to ours, it seems ordinary to us'.

It's a book that left me very keen to Study It - there are bits where they are having clever grown up conversations hinting and implying things I don't quite get, and there are bits where the characters just Know their feelings and act on them, but it's a bit show and not tell - whether I'm a modern reader, or a stupid reader, there were definitely times I'd like the Spark notes just to confirm that what was being implied was what I was reading.

The plot.. well, there isn't that much plot. We start with Elsie Lane, a schoolgirl who runs away from her boring sad middle class home, and seeks out her older sister, Leo, who lives on a boat with Helen. Elsie has a crush on Peter, who has been her doctor and the first man she's really known, there's an author living nearby called Joe, and the characters wander around and interact and change relationships and grow. But they're skillfully drawn, and engaging, and the book has moments of great humour and great sadness and great passion.

Much of the book is setting Elsie's naivety (and Peter's too) against the wisdom of Helen and Joe and Leo. Elsie is so young and sweet and painfully unaware about what is really going on - not stupid, but very sheltered, and not self aware enough to face the things that would hurt her. I wanted her to grow and change, and found the ending (heartbroken that Peter is having a fling with Leo, she returns to her parents) unsatisfactory... but she has grown and changed, and he parents have moved, and the world she goes back to is not the world she left.

Oh, Peter. I loved Peter. I hated Peter. I saw too much of myself reflected in Peter. So arrogant, so convinced he is Saving people by making them fall in love with him, so self centred that he doesn't even see what he is doing. The entire book is worth it for the scene where Peter carelessly and painfully turns up at the boat with his real girlfriend (which will break Elsie's heart if she realises) and Leo delightfully seduces the girlfriend and leaves him entirely dumbfounded and with no recourse.

And the book is worth it for the joy of living on the boat - the sunlight, the island, the feel of the punt sliding through the water, or the chilly morning swims, or the hard work pumping out the bilges.

It turns Well on its head in many ways. There is Leo, boyish in her shirts and trousers, living with Helen, a beautiful well dressed feminine nurse. And you see the patterns of Stephen and Mary, except then it is _Leo_ who finds a boy and runs off with the boy at the end of the book, and it is Helen who gets to make the speeches about how she stays with Leo because Leo is what she wants, but Leo stays with Helen only because she has a broken wing that will heal one day...

Yes, for the record, if you want Well of Loneliness fix it fic, this is another book where the charming, adorable and friendly young ladies of the title are going to end up Doomed because one of them ends up with a boy. Even the author is annoyed by this - when they republished the book she wanted them to stop the ending short - 'far better leave Leo's choice in the air with the presumption she stays with Helen' - and in the end they compromised by letting her write an epilogue, saying 'there is much I would write differently... the silliness of the ending [is] inevitable disaster, [which] is it naïve to present as a happy ending'. Although it isn't a happy ending, it is a deeply uncomfortable ending, Leo swayed by Joe's bold ultimatum of a letter, standing in her bedroom holding Helen's dress in floods of tears, and packing to leave. Not really fix it fic...

It's notable as a book in that it has both silly and serious relationships. Not a farce, where everything is casual and superficial, but a space where people fall casually together for light love making that doesn't have to mean a lot, and yet still have deep deep passions for the people they truly love.

Oh, Helen. Beautiful, charming, wonderful, she is never the focus of the novel, but drifts in when needed, healing, soothing, straightening. Graceful and kind, but with a core of strength, who would never want to try to keep someone who did not want to be kept. A goodbye kiss, and her graceful brisk walk to the ferry, 'It's perfectly fair. Whatever happens, that's the thing to remember. To see things straight, not to arrange them round oneself; if one keeps that, one keeps everything in the end'

So it may be a book that claims to be in conflict with Well's heavy handedness and moralising. But it has very clear messages and morals of its own, how to live and love and be good people, and how things run very deep, and one should never live in comfortable self indulgent delusions. ( )