The Girls of Slender Means

by Muriel Spark

Overview

"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions," begins The Girls of Slender Means, Dame Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II.

Like the May of Teck Club itself—"three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit"—its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal: practicing elocution, and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. The novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds.

Chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the Best Modern Novels in the Sunday Times of London, The Girls of Slender Means is a taut and eerily perfect novel by an author The New York Times has called "one of this century's finest creators of comic-metaphysical entertainment."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811213790
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	04/17/1998
Series:	New Directions Classic
Pages:	140
Sales rank:	231,334
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was the author of dozens of novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Memento Mori, A Far Cry from Kensington, The Girls of Slender Means, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, The Driver’s Seat, and many more. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.

What People are Saying About This

Anne Tyler

"One of Muriel Spark's most evocative novels."

Editorial Reviews

"Spark writes with a light comic touch, but there's an undertone of a kind of existential desperation."

Chicago Tribune - Patrick T. Reardon

"Spark, as usual, has perfectly plotted and peopled this giddy world of postwar delirium and girls' dormitory life," said LJ's reviewer of this satirical novel (LJ 10/1/63), which follows the low-income female inhabitants of London's May of Teak Club in the summer of 1945. Spark is always worth having.

Library Journal

"One of the best modern novels." -- The London Sun. Times Rev.

Anthony Burgess

In a London lodging club for single women, life after the blitz is a struggle, yet this novel opens like a 1945 version of chick-lit as residents trade gossip and ration coupons. Several of the eponymous girls are so slender they can slither through the gap in a lavatory window to sunbathe and cavort with boyfriends on the roof—but their hip measurements, and their climbing skills, will come to have more than passing significance. Listeners who appreciate MEMENTO MORI and THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE will enjoy this, with one proviso. The sheer number of young female characters challenges the narrator—the very fine Nadia May—who wisely chooses a straight read. The resulting recording is transparent and effective, but not particularly variable in tone or dynamic range. J.L.B. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2009 - AudioFile