The girls of slender means

141 pages

English language

Published Nov. 1, 1998 by New Directions Pub..

ISBN:
978-0-8112-1379-0
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OCLC Number:
37426364

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4 stars (6 reviews)

The Girls of Slender Means is Dame Muriel Spark's tragic 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 ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds.

14 editions

reviewed The girls of slender means by Muriel Spark (New Directions classics)

Review of 'The girls of slender means' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A dark turn

A witty and poignant novel-of-manners about young women in a boarding house in 1940s London. It takes a dark and tragic turn, which struck me as rather out-of-the-blue, but to a contemporary reader, or just one more familiar with the mindset of postwar England, it would probably have worked better; as the back cover blurb says, the funny giddy bit is "hiding some tragically painful war wounds".

So it's not amusing escapism as the beginning might suggest. But it's good.

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Subjects

  • World War, 1939-1945 -- England -- Fiction
  • Young women -- Fiction
  • London (England) -- Fiction