Maybe Return to Night will be my next Renault, actually. It looks like it's not about war, which definitely bumps it up the list right now.
It is a very good hospital novel, if you happen to enjoy such things. Renault had trained and worked for more than a decade as a nurse; it's visible in most of her contemporary novels, but I especially enjoy it in Return to Night where, unlike her first novel Purposes of Love (1939), I don't want to set the entire second half of the book on fire. I have some arguments with the ending of Return of Night, but I don't think it needs a total rewrite.
It's also the only one of her books that even got close to being made into a movie during her lifetime: it won a prize from MGM, on the financial strength of which Renault and her partner Julie Mullard moved to South Africa for the rest of their lives. The film was never made, however, and I am faintly sorry just because I would like to have seen what even happened when Hollywood met Renault's id. Every now and then I have opinions about casting.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-12-10 02:12 am (UTC)It is a very good hospital novel, if you happen to enjoy such things. Renault had trained and worked for more than a decade as a nurse; it's visible in most of her contemporary novels, but I especially enjoy it in Return to Night where, unlike her first novel Purposes of Love (1939), I don't want to set the entire second half of the book on fire. I have some arguments with the ending of Return of Night, but I don't think it needs a total rewrite.
It's also the only one of her books that even got close to being made into a movie during her lifetime: it won a prize from MGM, on the financial strength of which Renault and her partner Julie Mullard moved to South Africa for the rest of their lives. The film was never made, however, and I am faintly sorry just because I would like to have seen what even happened when Hollywood met Renault's id. Every now and then I have opinions about casting.