I was also tickled to read that she had to let her secretary go because the secretary wanted to improve her grammar!

Her relationships with her parents, friends and her agents, editors, correspondents, and especially with her companion Julie are heart-warming. This biography brought her person alive and vivid, and now I can look at her works from another dimention.


Very Good Biography   January 13, 2000
 8 out of 9 found this review helpful

I remember seeing Mary Renault's obituary in a magazine back in 1983 and being quite depressed because I had missed the chance to find out more about the mysterious author of some of my most cherished books - was she indeed a man? What was her life story and how did she come to write the Charioteer, or her Alexander trilogy? This biography suddenly leapt out at me in a book store a few years ago and filled in many of the gaps. It is well written and I recommend it to anyone who is curious to know more about this writer. It is balanced and also examines fairly the unfortunate controversy relating to PEN in South Africa during thje Apartheid era.


wonderful biography   August 9, 2000
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

I've long been an admirer of Renault's novels; her muscular prose, idealistic philosphies, model heroes, and her affection for gay male characters have struck a very resonant chord in me. After reading Sweetman's biography, I am now very much an admirer of Renault herself: intelligent, talented, courageous and strong. Once she wrote to a friend, speaking about feminists and women in general [she had a lifelong distaste for women, a point on which I now find myself differing]: "..the truth obviously is that [they] do seem to have, as men, some extra reserve of neural strength, some capacity for sustained intensity and inner drive, which women do not possess. I will believe otherwise when given evidence," rather selling herself short, I think, by not recognizing that very intensity and drive in herself.

Highly recommended for any fan of Renault's.


How Molly Challans Became Mary Renault   June 30, 2003
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Mary Renault, with her delicate handling of alternative sexual interests, touched a chord in a lot of people, whatever their orientation. This is the story about how little Molly Challans (with her love of cowboys and books) because the best selling author of historical novels set in both Bronze age and Classical Greece, Mary Renault.

One might almost have predicted the loveless marriage that produced her. Her mother's least attractive qualities seem to resonate in the character of Olympias (Alexander the Great's mother)in her later series (written after her mother's death and final betrayal). The absent or ineffective fathers in her books reflect her other father's physical and emotional distance from his family.

And around her momentous events of the 20th century occur-- World War I and II, the rise of the Nationalist Party in South Africa, the liberalization of sexual mores in Britain and the United States, and the struggle against appartheid.

This linear story is probably where the reader should go who wants to know more concrete facts about Mary Renault's life (she pronounced it Ren-olt not like the car). The author at times dips into analysis but doesn't linger there. His main informant seems to have been Mary's lifelong companion, Julia and at times the book seems to be as much about Julia as Mary-- he notes at one point that a friend referred to them as M & J rather than separately.

I'm still waiting for the definitve evaluation of Renault's novels but until it arrives this book is well worth reading if at times a little on the thin side.