but the sense of 'we're not like those queer people' from her protagonists kinda grated on me.

It was still grating the last time I checked on it, but did not prevent me from re-reading the novel. It's partly a Renault special and partly, I am beginning to think, a mid-century queer special—I understand the importance of asserting that not every queer person looks like the stereotype, but it falls over fast into respectability politics.