From Library Journal
"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.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

John Updike, The New Yorker
Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive.

From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Sonja Larsen
"Long ago in 1945 all of the nice people in England were poor..." So begins Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means. Set in a "home for young ladies" in war-time London, it is a funny and sharply drawn portrait of a group of young women struggling to survive in a world in which men and money are vital but scarce commodities. The "girls" are polite and well-bred, with eyes that gleam with "an eager spirited light that resembled near genius, but was youth merely." Jane craves time to do her "brainwork" and supports herself through various schemes; beautiful Selina is not above accepting clothing rations from any one of her "weak" men; and Joanna, the rector's daughter, is much taken with poetry. In this atmosphere of genteel poverty and youthful chaos, these women, practical yet romantic, ruthless yet tender-hearted, negotiate their passage to the end of the war and the end of an era. Muriel Spark's gift for characters and dialogue make this little book both satirical and compassionate in its vision. The war years were a time when women, socialized to be dependent, were forced by circumstances to be autonomous. The ways in which these young women coped with the daily compromise in their life without ultimately feeling "compromised" makes for both entertaining and illuminating reading. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

Book Description
"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 London Sunday Times Review, 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."

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by Muriel Spark, published in a shortened version in 1963 in the Saturday Evening Post and published in book form later that year. The novel, set primarily in London during World War II, focuses on the inhabitants of a residential club for unmarried women and on the friendship of several of them with a young man named Nicholas Farringdon. When tragedy strikes and 13 of the women are killed, Nicholas realizes that there is no safety anywhere, especially for those on whom fortune had once seemed to smile. This epiphany stimulates his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Years later, he dies in Haiti, where he has gone as a missionary.

About the Author
Dame Muriel Spark, born and educated in Edinburgh, published her spectacularly original first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. Among her twenty novels, it was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (and its stage and screen adaptations) which made her internationally famous. She has also published several volumes of poetry, criticism, and stories, as well as a play, an autobiography, and three books for children. New Directions also publishes the following titles by Muriel Spark: The Abbess of Crewe, The Comforters, The Driver's Seat, Open to the Public: New & Collected Stories, and The Public Image.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

"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.

Anthony Burgess

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

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