The Girls of Slender Means
“In a day when so many writers seem to write so much alike, it is a delight to discover one who writes like no one except herself. Muriel Spark, an aloof, sharp-eyed Scotswoman, is such a writer, and her most noticeable characteristics are, of course, her wit, her absolute pitch in dialogue, her economy of style and her sedulous avoidance of sentiment. These might add up to dryness, but in Miss Spark’s work, they do not. Her very skirting of the sensibilities is a sign of a how fully aware of them she is, as she proved especially in her unerring picture of the old in Memento Mori and as she now proves again in this story about the young, The Girls of Slender Means...those who seek new dimensions in their reading will find this to be Miss Spark’s most interesting piece of work.”
New York Times
“Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions…” Thus begins 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 building 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. But the novel’s harrowing ending reveals that the girls’ giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds.
Praise