Purposes of Love is (apart from The Charioteer, which as an outright queer novel is different) the only one of Renault's contemporary novels I've read. I hated it and have never re-read it. Increasingly, I can't re-read the Charioteer either, because while the heart of the story was literally formative for me, much of the rest makes me wince.

Renault, to me, is a hugely gifted artist wedded to an awful worldview. The painful thing is that every once in a while she rises above it, and you can see what might have been.