She didn’t want to bow to convention, and nor should she have to, but I felt her character as a young woman to be too candid and fearless to be believable. I enjoyed Molly’s voice, particularly when she was a child, I loved her naughty behaviour and her cleverness, and I liked watching her grow up, but her narrative voice as an adult irritated me. By this time, Molly’s dearly-loved adopted father has died and her mother won’t have her in the house, so Molly hitch-hikes to New York where she expects the world to be different for her. When her schoolmates discover her affair with a fellow student, Molly loses her scholarship and is thrown out of school.

Molly realises she is attracted to girls at a very young age and as she grows up, doesn’t see any reason to hide her sexual orientation. Molly is quick-witted and fearless and so finds herself in regular trouble, particularly with her adopted mother, who wishes Molly were more ladylike. Rubyfruit Jungle is told by Molly Bolt and starts with her childhood in a small Southern American town in the 1960s.

Happily for me the two stories complimented each other. I didn’t realise the book was a ‘coming of age lesbian novel’ or I wouldn’t have read it so soon after Tipping the Velvet, which is a similar story except that it can also add ‘historical’ to its labelling. Rubyfruit Jungle was Rita Mae Brown’s first novel and the first novel I’ve read by this author.

Ruby fruit jungle author