When the point of view [in The Friendly Young Ladies] is that of the girl, Elsie, [Miss Renault] is wholly and admirably successful. The opening chapters in Cornwall are amusing, sensitive and well written; the ridiculous middle-class parents and the atmosphere of the middle-class home are perfect…. As soon as Elsie gets into the world of the friendly young ladies, Miss Renault's troubles begin. Thenceforward, whenever things are seen from Elsie's angle, the book is lively and real; her misunderstanding of the personal relationships around her is well done, and so are the few later actions to which her author commits her, including the final one. Unfortunately, a fog descends whenever Miss Renault tries to get inside her grown-ups, and a most promising book gets lost. The book aims at depths which are impenetrable because Miss Renault has ignored the preliminary necessities of organisation on the surface. It is a real lack of invention that makes Leonora and Joe seem so unreal and so nebulously conceived: both have pasts which are left too much to conjecture for their pressure on the present to be comprehensible to the reader; and the love scenes between these and other characters which mark the progress of such story as there is do not bring the characters any more clearly before us. One cannot even tell precisely how friendly the young ladies have been to each other. Miss Renault is at the difficult stage of being able to express subtle thoughts and truths about personality without being able always to attach them to personalities whom they fit; but she is a very able writer, and her younger heroine alone makes her book worth reading.
Henry Reed, "New Novels: 'The Friendly Young Ladies'," in The New Statesman & Nation (© 1944 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. XXVII, No. 712, October 14, 1944, p. 256.
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