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The Girls of Slender Means

3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 · rating details · 1,264 ratings · 115 reviews

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 tragica...more

Paperback, 140 pages

Published April 17th 1998 by New Directions (first published 1963)

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Nov 17, 2011 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: catholic-novelists, favorites, war-works

' Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions'.
As with every Spark novel, it is the exceptions which make all the difference. This is a great novel. All Sparkian life is here. Odd characters, noble losers, tragic deaths and sinister naughtiness.
The eponymous girls live in the May of Teck club; An up-market boarding house for young women too poor to thrive in flats by themselves, too refined to slum it and with a couple of our 'heroines', one too selfless t...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Barbara A rated it 5 of 5 stars

I feel a crush coming on. Muriel Spark, or her spirit, and I are about to become very good friends.

I've just finished "The Girls of Slender Means", having read it at leisure, but with great care and tremendous pleasure. What a joy it is, and how renewing, to be reminded that the short, perfectly constructed novel can satisfy so fully. Although slender in size, this small book--in comparison to today's overly-wrought and often boringly-padded fiction-- is rich in sardonic observation, fulsome in...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Bogdan rated it 4 of 5 stars

девушки со скромными средствами, но весьма нескромными амбициями, как утверждает аннотация, приведенная к роману, роману, который надо было бы назвать скорее повестью, а не таким большим эпическим жанром, хотя и насчет этого можно было бы поспорить. есть ли эта искомая амбициозность или ее нет – это тоже может стать достойным предметом спора.

поскольку по моему скромному мнению не в амбициях дело, ведь само дело разворачивается в далеком 1945 году, когда, по утверждению писательницы, все люди за...more девушки со скромными средствами, но весьма нескромными амбициями, как утверждает аннотация, приведенная к роману, роману, который надо было бы назвать скорее повестью, а не таким большим эпическим жанром, хотя и насчет этого можно было бы поспорить. есть ли эта искомая амбициозность или ее нет – это тоже может стать достойным предметом спора.

поскольку по моему скромному мнению не в амбициях дело, ведь само дело разворачивается в далеком 1945 году, когда, по утверждению писательницы, все люди за редким исключением были бедными, но не были несчастными, бедность воспринималась как данность, а те немногие, кто не были бедными, таковыми себя все-таки ощущали.

и в этом рукой писательницы благословенном 1945 году вырастает на разрушенных улицах лондона некий благословенный пансионат, клуб принцессы тэкской, в котором проживают многочисленные работающие девицы, прибывшие со всех сторон и весей британии, имеющие право оставаться в клубе до тридцати лет, и история знает только три случая, трех дев, благополучно встретивших свой статус старых дев в здании, откуда их, собственно, никто более не собирается выселять (путаясь то и дело по ходу действия романа, они в нем не сыграют основной роли, хотя одна настойчиво будет изображать из себя современную кассандру, призывая духов ушедшей войны в виде бомбы, упавшей на территорию сада, но так и не разорвавшейся, хоть в финале бомбу таки постигнет ее печальная участь).

на втором, третьем и четвертом этажах проживают девицы разной степени красоты и уродства, разной комплекции, от худышек до толстушек, разной степени ума и глупости, от занимающихся «интеллектуальной деятельностью» до совершенно бессмысленных, способных только осознать, что они грохаются с лошади или «залетают», радостно делая это поводом для приглашения подруг на свадьбу. здесь платье от мадам скьяпарелли носится поочередно гражданками, отправляющимися на свидание, а продуктовые, чайные и мыльные карточки служат средством обретения счастья, удовольствия, статуса и просто «жизни», которая выражается в шпильках, которые внезапно исчезают из магазинов. нежные и возвышенные в силу юности возраста создания живут, увлекаясь регулярно раз в две недели новыми поклонниками, спя то с одним, то с двумя, а то и с тремя любовниками (но не одновременно); дочери священников, влюбленные в викариев, соседствуют с прагматичными девицами достаточно облегченного поведения и служащими, шпионящими в пользу работодателей. здесь к ним в гости приходят то безвестные писатели-аферисты венгерского происхождения с плечами, усыпанными перхотью, то военные, среди которых особо котируются военно-воздушные силы, то полуанархисты-полупоэты, то американцы, то просто безвестная неименуемая публика мужского рода.

где-то в рядах девушек присутствует, то зримо, то лишь своим зычным голосом некая джоанна, образец литературного вкуса и восторженная декламаторша джерарда мэнли хопкинса вперемешку с перси биши шелли, эдгаром по и джоном дринкуотером; джейн, сотрудничающая в издательстве (и впоследствии в толстом женском журнале), умеющая ориентироваться в вопросах подделывания писем и писании жалостливых посланий то бернарду шоу, то сомерсету моэму, но катастрофически не умеющая выбирать мужчин; селина, образец стиля, выдержки, благомыслия и прочих добродетелей, художественно возлежащая в креслах, подобно дорогому боа, которое поочередно вешается на шеи мужчин, с которыми «нет проблем» в смысле отсутствия с их стороны собственнических замашек. это мир, осознавший, что пришел конец войны, но не конец трудностей, время облегчения, но не само время, дерганое, склеротичное, время истерзанное, сбивающее с толку и убивающее. мир желания жить, но отсутствия для этого средств, мир страстного стремления «устроиться», но при этом не отказаться от тонких чулок. мир юности, заброшенный в усталую послевоенную жизнь полуразрушенного города, обреченного в агонии повторять 27-й псалом: «…ты сплел во мне кости и жилы, связал мою плоть, и теперь, перед смертью, я в страхе твержу твое имя…», в то время как молодость безудержно цитирует марвелловское «к стыдливой возлюбленной»: «всю силу, юность, пыл неудержимый сплетем в один клубок нерасторжимый…» где-то взрывается бомба и мир падает. а потом вновь поднимается. и вновь падает. и вновь…

очень нежно, очень с юмором, очень по-английски, местами по-вудхаузовски – достойно внимательного прочтения и восхищения.
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Aug 13, 2012 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

A frothy black-comic novella about a group of young ladies living and loving in London...only until it hits you that, no, it's more: it's a retelling of the Gospels inside a girls dorm.

Spark couldn't have been more blatant: the [Spoiler Alert] one girl that perishes in the housefire - the one who remains the most selflessly calm, recites scripture and measures the hips of herself and her thirteen trapped companions - was named Joanna Childe.

And from there I'm not really going out on a limb to...more

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Dec 27, 2011 Madeline rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-list

A stirring, beautiful novel that's deceptively short and light, and starts with what is now one of my favorite opening paragraphs in all literature:

"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions. The streets of the cities were lined with buildings in bad repair or in no repair at all, bomb-sites piled with stony rubble, houses like giant teeth in which decay had been drilled out, leaving only the cavity. Some bomb-ripped buildings looked like the ruins of anc...more A stirring, beautiful novel that's deceptively short and light, and starts with what is now one of my favorite opening paragraphs in all literature:

"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions. The streets of the cities were lined with buildings in bad repair or in no repair at all, bomb-sites piled with stony rubble, houses like giant teeth in which decay had been drilled out, leaving only the cavity. Some bomb-ripped buildings looked like the ruins of ancient castles until, at a closer view, the wallpapers of various quite normal rooms would be visible, room above room, exposed, as on a stage, with one wall missing; sometimes a lavatory chain would dangle over nothing from a fourth- or fifth-floor ceiling; most of all the staircases survived, like a new art-form, leading up and up to an unspecified destination that made unusual demands on the mind's eye. All the nice people were poor; at least, that was a general axiom, the best of the rich being poor in spirit."

The story centers around the May of Teck Club, a boarding house for single young women working in London, and the lives of the women living there as they try to rebuild their lives after World War II. The girls do their best to resume some normalcy, trading clothing coupons, trying to maintain their diets despite limited food options, and sharing the one good dress in the club whenever one of them has a fancy date. In just 142 pages, Muriel Spark presents a large cast of characters, all fully-realized and dimensional and flawed, and it's frankly kind of amazing how much story she manages to fit into such a short book. For the majority it's just a light, fluffy novel of girls dating and having petty fights and chasing various men, like Sex and the City if it were set in post-war London and all the girls were poor and not horrible. It's deceptive lightness, though, because the ending is emotional and shattering, and I won't go into any more detail than that because it shouldn't be spoiled.

If you were underwhelmed by Spark's other book on The List, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I recommend giving her another chance here. You won't be disappointed. (less)

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Sep 11, 2011 Charles Dee Mitchell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-lit

This is the first Muriel Spark novel I have read, and I have always had the notion that she was an author one read entirely, not just a random novel here and there. But The Girls of Slender Means is a completely satisfying three hours' read. Spark had me from the first paragraph, and when the novel was over, the incidents of death, murder, and insanity seemed all of a piece with the sort of girls' boarding house comedy I associate with something along the lines of Stage Door.

The setting is Lond...more

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Feb 07, 2010 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 4 of 5 stars

London, just after the second world war. Basic necessities are scarce, food and clothes are being rationed. Somewhere in the city there is an old residential building turned into a dormitory which was spared from the Nazi bombings. Here is found the May of Teck Club and its first of the Rules of Constitution explains what it is:

"The May of Teck Club exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: british-authors

‘The most gifted and innovative British novelist of her generation’. (David Lodge). “One of the greatest British writers since 1945″ (The Times). When Anthony Burgess, created his list 0f The 99 Best Novels in English since 1939, he singled out The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark’s 1963 novelette, calling it “Brilliant, brittle, the production of a fine brain and a superior craft.” Reading these accolades created high expectations in my mind that The Girls would sparkle with the kind of com...more ‘The most gifted and innovative British novelist of her generation’. (David Lodge). “One of the greatest British writers since 1945″ (The Times). When Anthony Burgess, created his list 0f The 99 Best Novels in English since 1939, he singled out The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark’s 1963 novelette, calling it “Brilliant, brittle, the production of a fine brain and a superior craft.” Reading these accolades created high expectations in my mind that The Girls would sparkle with the kind of comic, waspish style of prose for which Muriel Spark was renowned.

The novel was indeed clever. It appears to be a simple story about a group of women who live in The May of Teck Club, a rather shabby but genteel boarding house in central London. It’s 1945 and the war in Europe is over but the girls who live in the club still struggle suffer with clothing rationing and shortages of basic food items like tea. Jane is the brainy one, forever using her work in a publishing house as an excuse for eating; the elocution teacher Joanna is the cultured voice of the community, whose voice can be heard throughout the house as she recites poetry with her pupils, while Selina is the beautiful, wilful inhabitant who cares little for the men she sleeps with beyond the fact they give her entry to parties.

There is much larking about; swapping of lipsticks and dresses and merry escapades including smearing their naked bodies with butter in order to squeeze through a narrow bathroom window and get onto the roof to sunbathe (inevitably one of them gets stuck). But as we get to know them and their eccentricities, the darker sides of their lives become more apparent. Joanna’s devotion to her work is the product of an unrequited love for a curate while Jane’s much vaunted ‘brainwork’ involves writing letters to famous authors to try and wheedle money out of them.

Burgess’ review of this novel talks of Spark’s ability to look at human pain and folly. While there is a darker side to the novel (particularly in the ending), the pain and violence that Burgess saw in The Girls of Slender Means wasn’t as obvious to me. This maybe because the darker tone is masqued by the way that Sparks uses the omniscient narrator to constantly undermine any pretensions these girls have about themselves. Jane for example, becomes attracted to Nicholas Farrington (a man who seems to be something in British Intelligence yet professes to be an anarchist).

"She felt she had a certain something to offer Nichols, this being her literary and brain-work side. This was a mistake she continued to make in her relations with men, inferring from her own prference for men of books and literature their proference for women of the same business. And it never really occured to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls."

The difficulty I experienced was that the novel was too short to really see the main characters developed fully so by the end I didn’t feel particularly engaged with their lives and experiences. The novel structure also worked against my engagement – it’s comprised of very short scenes which switch the focus of attention quickly from one girl to another in a mix of dialogue with prose and snatches of poems and told in a non linear chronology.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it but wouldn’t consider it as a particularly remarkable book.(less)

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Nov 15, 2012 Kristi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books, reading-challenge-2012

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In this novella, Spark introduces us the girls of the May of Teck Club, an old mansion converted into a home "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London." The detail and the feeling with with Spark imbues this house is one of the major merits of this book. Despite the limited space in which she has to work, she painstakingly introduces...more In this novella, Spark introduces us the girls of the May of Teck Club, an old mansion converted into a home "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London." The detail and the feeling with with Spark imbues this house is one of the major merits of this book. Despite the limited space in which she has to work, she painstakingly introduces us to the entire house, from the newcomers on the first floor to the most glamorous residents of the top floor to the spinsters who never quite managed to leave. The book moves back and forth in time, foreshadowing a disaster that isn't revealed until the end, a traumatic event that is somehow connected to the martyrdom of a priest in Haiti.

So, I'm not quite sure what I think of this book. It has a variety of easily appreciable qualities. As I mentioned above, the skill with which Spark brings the May of Teck Club to life is truly impressive. Her characters are interesting. The repeated reference to Jane and her alleged "brain work" was as hilarious as it was irritating. The plot is compelling because although so much of the book's action is fairly mundane, you know there is tragedy to come. But I think I failed to grasp the larger symbolism and meaning that would have made this book really amazing, particularly with respect to the ending. I understand that the tragedy led to Nicholas's conversion, but I don't really understand why. If it's just because Joanna's death was tragic (which it was), and he was inspired by her spirituality, that's easy enough to understand. But there seems to be more to it. I have read elsewhere that Selina's cold-heartedness is part of the catalyst. But to be honest, I didn't really read Selina as that cold or at all evil. She couldn't have saved anyone in the house because they couldn't fit through the window. Yes, saving the dress was probably shallow, but who knows if she was in her right mind or not--perhaps she assumed that the firemen would get everyone out. Afterwards, she seems to get married rather quickly and screams when she sees Nicholas again--but isn't it understandable that she would be traumatized? Others cite her behavior in Nicholas's bedroom as a sign of her coldness; he wanted to convert her to fit his ideal, but she was having none of it. But why does this make her cold or evil? Nicholas himself has little to redeem his character, at least where we see him in this novel; he seems to be using Selina just as much as she is using him. I think I'm missing the religious symbolism. Some reviewers have gone so far as to suggest that Joanna symbolizes Jesus, while Selina is the devil. The other thing I don't really understand is the murder in the final scene, the furtive stabbing of a woman in a crowd that is only witnessed by Nicholas. It seems like there are a variety of possible interpretations. Anyway, I need to think about this more; I suspect that there would be value in reading this again. My other minor complaint is that I sometimes found it hard to keep track of all of the characters and the time shifts, particularly in the early part of the book--there's just a lot going on with a lot of people.

Anyway, I would recommend this book to fans of Muriel Spark and to people looking for a short, quick read that will make you scratch your head. If you're looking to read your first Spark novel, I'd probably recommend The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie over this one.(less)

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Oct 14, 2011 Justin Evans rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Probably the best novel I've read in a while. To anyone who doubts that openly modernist literature can be gripping, funny, and easy to comprehend, I say: go read Muriel Spark. The straightforward narrative is broken up by paragraphs describing scenes 5? 10? 20? years in the future; she somehow uses the methods of caricature to create rounded figures (imagine if all Dickens' or Trollope's funny names brought to mind not just 'villainous businessman' or 'doctor who kills patients,' but fully fles...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Marc L rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: english-literature

Londen, 1945, de zomer na de oorlog. Spark focust op een groepje jonge vrouwen dat er het beste van probeert te maken, zowel in het dagelijkse leven (alles is nog op de bon) als in de strijd om de mannen. Ze wonen in een huis voor "minderbedeelde" meisjes, al moet dat hier in meerdere betekenissen worden begrepen. Dit korte verhaal slingert enkele keren heen en weer tussen 1945 en een niet bepaald later tijdstip (begin jaren 60?). Spark is zoals anders ongelofelijk trefzeker in haar tekening, ma...more

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May 28, 2012 Tessa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fictive, historical

As this was written 20 some years after the time period in which it takes place, I'm going to call this historical. It's like a character study of that time and the culture of wartime Britain, focused through the girls living at the May of Teck.

I picked a used copy up at a neighborhood flower festival and it seemed the right heft to read in the impending heat. One of the (too many) blogs I read was salivating over Muriel Spark, and I think Nick Hornby, too, in his column for the Believer. Rightl...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Tze-Wen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library, 20th-century, 2012, united-kingdom

[This review was originally posted on my blog.]

The Girls of Slender Means are young working ladies under the age of thirty who reside in the heavily damaged - but not bombed - May of Teck hostel in Kensington, London. The setting is post-war Britain, a time in which "the nice are poor" and the poor make the best of their reduced circumstances. There is Jane, a fat girl who prides herself on her brainwork in the world of books. She tries to follow the example of the girls who share her floor: to...more [This review was originally posted on my blog.]

The Girls of Slender Means are young working ladies under the age of thirty who reside in the heavily damaged - but not bombed - May of Teck hostel in Kensington, London. The setting is post-war Britain, a time in which "the nice are poor" and the poor make the best of their reduced circumstances. There is Jane, a fat girl who prides herself on her brainwork in the world of books. She tries to follow the example of the girls who share her floor: to not eat more than 1000-odd calories a day. Time after time, Jane falls of the wagon and consoles herself with the fact that she, as opposed to the others, needs to feed her brain in order to work. What she actually does, is helping her boss find weaknesses in the work of aspiring authors, so they'll sign unprofitable contracts. It is through her employer that she meets Nicholas Farringdon, but she likes him too much to give him the usual treatment. Instead, she invites him to the May of Teck for Sunday lunch and supper. Through Nicholas' eyes, the reader is introduced to a romanticised way of life.

"The weeks had passed, and since in the May of Teck Club they were weeks of youth in the ethos of war, they were capable of accommodating quick happenings and reversals, rapid formations of intimate friendships, and a range of lost and discovered loves that in later life and in peace would take years to happen, grow, and fade. The May of Teck girls were nothing if not economical. Nicholas, who was past his youth, was shocked at heart by their week-by-week emotions."

He is utterly enchanted by the young ladies that dwell at the May of Teck and their creativity in making the best of life. Selina, the most beautiful of them all, is particularly attractive to him. In the passage below, the first hints of future changes can be detected.

"With the reckless ambition of a visionary, he pushed his passion for Selina into a desire that she, too, should accept and exploit the outlines of poverty in her life. He loved her as he loved his native country. He wanted Selina to be an ideal society personified amongst her bones, he wanted her beautiful limbs to obey her mind and heart like intelligent men and women, and or these to possess the same grace and beauty as her body. [...]
It was not the first instance of a man taking a girl to bed with the aim of converting her soul, but he, in great exasperation, felt that it was, and poignantly, in bed, willed and willed the awakening of her social conscience. [...] It was incredible to him that she should not share with him an understanding of the lovely attributes of dispossession and poverty, her body was so austere and economically furnished."

Here the other meaning of the title becomes clear: not only are the girls of the May of Teck poor, they are often quite slender of figure as well. Those who are the skinniest - Selina and one or two others - have hips of no more than thirty-six and a quarter inch in width and are therefore the lucky ones who can squeeze themselves through the seven-inch window slit in one of the upper bathrooms, in order to get to the roof. Towards the end of the book, when many of the girls have to escape fire through this very window, small girth suddenly gains a life-and-death importance.

With this charming novella, Muriel Spark has compiled a time capsule that will have you appreciating the benefits of frugality and the intense life experiences of the youthful.(less)

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Nov 17, 2011 Kats rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, book-club-reads, print

Having enjoyed "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" immensely many years ago, I was delighted when this Spark novel/la was chosen for the December book group meeting. Unfortunately, having finished reading it today, it left me cold, sometimes I was plain bored and at other times I didn't understand what was going on because of the switching back between 1945 and some time in the early 60s. There were way too many quotations, poems etc for my liking, and they distracted from what little plot there was...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Deborah Biancotti rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: writer-women

This book really grew on me.

Spark's deceptively cool tone lulled me into an early misperception that nothing was going on in this almost-post-war-Britain tale. Plus the sixties-style verbs used to describe women as 'chattering', 'twittering' and 'gobbling' made me uncomfortable. And then there was protagonist, the mercurial Jane whose affectation of describing her menial job as 'brain work' & her constant striving to "feed my brain" without becoming fat on wartime rations was, to be honest,...more This book really grew on me.

Spark's deceptively cool tone lulled me into an early misperception that nothing was going on in this almost-post-war-Britain tale. Plus the sixties-style verbs used to describe women as 'chattering', 'twittering' and 'gobbling' made me uncomfortable. And then there was protagonist, the mercurial Jane whose affectation of describing her menial job as 'brain work' & her constant striving to "feed my brain" without becoming fat on wartime rations was, to be honest, kind of pathetic.

That's the irritating stuff. On the awesome side, the story is a non-chronological account of a poet, Nicholas Farraday, when a) he meets the eponymous girls, and b) just after he's assassinated in Haiti for preaching Catholicism to unwilling Haitians. The point of pitting these two sides of the story together is to explore what moved Farraday from anarchy to Catholicism, & the dramatic ending of the book of course does that. But I'm not convinced I agree with the prevailing wisdom on the meaning of the ending - or rather, where the meaning lies most directly. In fact, I was so stumped by the ending that I turned back to the beginning & spent a day re-reading the entire book. And I'm STILL not sure I agree with the popular interpretation of the ending.

On the ending: (view spoiler)[popular wisdom (i.e. Google) claims that the conversion of Nicholas to evangelism comes from the moment Selina walks through the crowd of trapped girls in the upstairs bathroom, carrying the dress she's stolen. On the roof, she asks him, 'Is it safe here?' and he crosses himself. Later he goes to see her and she screams, unable to speak. And then he meets her husband, a lovely chap. And it seems the story of Selina has received a happy ending, though the dress is never returned to its owner. In a way & as a sideline, I came to see the dress as the God of the girls of slender means: their most precious thing within the strictures of a country driven to poverty by war. In that world, the dress is something shared and bartered. According to Wisdom, it is this act - stealing the dress - that converts Nicholas. A single act of evil.

But I'm not convinced that's it. And maybe I'm being foolish, maybe Spark has done hundreds of interviews where she asserts yes, it really is because of the theft of the dress. But to my mind the act isn't evil *enough*. It could just as easily be explained as the act of a mind that's come unhinged by the events that are rapidly leading to the death of the pious and sad Joanna (a woman who's martyred herself for love, who is so ashamed at her own fickleness when she transfers her love from a man who doesn't love her to one that does, that she winds up refusing to love any others. And so she spends her life in the menial poverty of the girls of slender means, dying because she is just not slender enough, and because the thought of meeting the almighty has so rattled her she can't even make her escape when a path is offered her).

After the death and the theft and the destruction of the building where the girls lived in their "unselfconscious attitudes of poverty", Nicholas accompanies Jane and Rudi to the celebrations of the end of the war. It's here Nicholas sees a sailor stab a woman in the stomach. The crowd is so dense that she can't even fall, but is held upright while, we assume, she bleeds (to her death?). Nicholas tries to shout but his voice is also lost in the crowd and soon enough they're pulled apart, Nicholas from the dreadful tableau of the murderous sailor. When he finds himself up against the sailor again later, he takes a forged letter from his pocket - a letter Jane wrote for him, declaring his genius and signed as if from a fellow writer - and he shoves that letter down the sailor's shirt.

I've chased back and forth across the book for other word of that sailor, some other sign of the letter showing up after Nicholas dies. I haven't found it, and yet the scene is so resonant I think it must mean *something*. I think, in fact, it's this which is the 'small moment of evil' that converts Nicholas. In the middle of a celebration, a recently-returned sailor - we assume - murders his partner & stays around to enjoy the party. Life, it seems, never does get precious not even after a war. I began to wonder just how many sailors and soldiers had returned with that darkness in them, and what darkness was held at bay by the May of Teck building where the girls lived that precious, fragile existence. I wondered what other risks were taken in the name of 'security', apart from blocking the fire escape in the May of Teck building to keep men out (or girls in - as it would, so tragically, by the end). I wondered if Nicholas had looked at this scene and seen a kind of descent and figured he was better off away from 'civilisation' and all its trappings, in a place where he could wish for ascent instead.

But, heck, I could be wrong and maybe it is all about the stupid dress. (hide spoiler)]

Powerful, humorous & sparse, this is a slender volume of some magnificence.(less)

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Mar 25, 2008 Erik Simon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Boy I love this book. It starts out as one of those charming British tales about life during the war and ends with the most astonishing murder I've ever read in fiction. The murder left me horrified and speechless. Spark was such a taut, elegant writer.

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Jun 30, 2012 Susan Rose rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-book-list, humour, novella

This charming novella very much seems like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie's older, darker, more experienced sister. This book set in the tail end of the second world war, follows a group of young men staying at a hostel in London for young poor girls who work in the city.

As with other Muriel Spark's the humour is sharp, the characters well formed and the dialogue instantly quotable and charming, however for some reason I don't really know why I didn't enjoy this book as much as The Prime of Miss...more

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Oct 20, 2011 Roberta rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

Cinico romanzo ambientato nella Londra del secondo dopoguerra, Le ragazze di pochi mezzi ruota attorno al May of Teck Club, una specie di ostello per signorine indigenti. I pochi mezzi del titolo sembrano riferirsi non solo alla povertà delle ragazze ma anche alla loro scarsa levatura morale (la maggior parte di esse passa il tempo preoccupandosi di vestiti, ragazzi e diete).
L'incontro di Nicholas Farrington, un aspirante scrittore, con questo mondo, che inizialmente gli sembra una specie di is...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Paul Dinger rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first read Muriel Spark in college for a modern lit class. The book was Loitering With Intent and it was a very strange portrait of an artist as a young Londoner. This book is also very strange, and I found myself on more than one occassion going back and re reading it. It is about a saintly young man and the women who live at the May Teck club who may have inspired him. I must say I really liked this one a lot, there is a quality in it that is usually lacking in Spark's work, a sense that she...more

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Jan 28, 2011 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

It’s quite possible I missed some threads of subtext, but this seemed a fairly minor Spark novel. As always Spark’s writing carries you along, but at times the book seemed little more than a gussied-up soap opera (who is sleeping with--yawn--whom?). And there is another fault, one I’d never seen in Spark before: the plot is predictable (especially if you’re familiar with the dramatic principle of “Chekhov’s gun”). In the end, the novel may be most rewarding for the picture it provides of London...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Katharine rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was a fast read! I really liked it. I liked the voice, kind of an ambivalent, ironic voice that was funny at times. I liked the beautiful snapshot of the settting -- London in the summer of 1945, I really felt like I was there. At first I had a hard time keeping up with all the "girls" but as the story progressed, I could see each one and felt their suffering.

I would consider this a literary work, but it is approachable and humorous at times, tender yet cynical in others. I'm very gla...more

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Feb 10, 2010 Hannah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: engl-045-20th-century-novel, required-reading

I'm not really sure what to say about this book. I like Spark's writing style a lot, and the way she weaves the pasts, presents and futures of so many characters together under one roof. In that way it reminded me of Brideshead Revisited, with so many characters orbiting around a central point, which was the Brideshead Estate. For Spark's characters it is the May of Teck club, a hostel almost never referred to as such by its many residents. I love the way Spark uses the club as a jumping off poi...more

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Apr 30, 2009 Anne rated it 2 of 5 stars

So despite my proclivity for all things England, I'm beginning to realize that I don't like Muriel Spark. I love Miss Jean Brodie, but that's due to the strength of the character (and not in small part to the movie version). Her writing is SO cynical, and always with the benefit of hindsight. I remember being annoyed that I knew what was going to happen at the end of Miss Jean Brodie before it had even started--and I felt the same way about this. I much prefer a straightforward narrative. And I...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Liz rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading this book, it is written through flashback the protagonist is having set in the 40's building up to a tragic end. The main plot revolves around the may-tech club where the girls of slender means live. Many are obsessed with material belongs and finding a man. Through out the book there are passages just of the elocution teacher teaching, as it can be hear from all around the building. This I found added more emphases to the tragedy that occurred as they offered a sort of...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, 5-stars

"The warden drove a car as she would have driven a man had she possessed one."

This is no cozy keeping-calm-and-carrying-on romanticized war story. Spark's prose is delectably sharp, and I'm fond of how she structures her stories, but mostly, I'm fascinated by her characters and their world-views and how they bounce off one another to create comedy and tragedy. Anger and need and societal shifts and delusions and conversions, it's all mixed up in this short but sturdy book, and I haven't puzzled...more

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Jul 11, 2012 Christine rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is one of my all-time favourite books. I love it. It's set in the May of Teck Club, once an up-market, private house, now a hostel for impoverished young women. It’s 1945, in the few short months between VE Day and VJ Day, but the girls are concerned not with war or peace, but with love, money and food.

They live in a world where ‘all the nice people were poor, and few were nicer, as nice people come, than these girls at Kensington’. ebutantes and vicars’ daughters rub shoulders in their sh...more

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May 16, 2012 Mariano Hortal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british-literature, genre-classics

"Hace tiempo, en 1945, toda la buena gente era pobre, salvo contadas excepciones", así comienza la novela "La señoritas de los escasos medios" de la escritora británica (aunque de origen escocés) Muriel Spark. Está ambientada tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial y se ubica en el Club May of Teck que "existe para proporcionar seguridad económica y amparo social a las señoritas de escasos medios con una edad inferior a los 30 años que se vean obligadas a residir lejos sus familias por tener que desempeñ...more

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May 28, 2011 Philip rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: directed-reading

This was my first Muriel Spark book, and I found it enjoyable to read for its wit and glimpses of life in mid-century London. The story centers on half a dozen young women in the waning months of World War II, housed in the fictional May of Teck Club in a fashionable part of London. The perspective alternates between real-time narration and brief phone conversations nearly twenty years later amongst the former residents, the "girls of slender means" (young ladies of 'good family' but limited pro...more

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Jun 14, 2008 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Book Club choice for June. It tied with John Fowles's The Magus but had more people put it in second place, so its overall ranking was higher. Such are the subtleties and unwritten rules of our elite organization.

UPDATE MAY 25
I finished my first read, which for a Muriel Spark book means that I have identified what the important things are going to be and who all the characters are. Now I can go look them up, think about them for a while, and reread it so I know what's really going on. For this b...more Book Club choice for June. It tied with John Fowles's The Magus but had more people put it in second place, so its overall ranking was higher. Such are the subtleties and unwritten rules of our elite organization.

UPDATE MAY 25
I finished my first read, which for a Muriel Spark book means that I have identified what the important things are going to be and who all the characters are. Now I can go look them up, think about them for a while, and reread it so I know what's really going on. For this book I have to look up:

The Battle of Dunkirk
The sources of all those poetry excerpts
Why, when, and where the queen was called May of Teck
What was happening in Haiti

Muriel Spark is very interested in fire. The last three books I've read by her contain major scenes with burning buildings. Interesting... I totally dig her brand of feminism, though. I think this book has extraordinary female characters, in that ordinary women sparkle with personality and difference and normalcy. Plus that dig about all the women poets at that party really being just the typists for their male poet boyfriends and that was probably the same thing. That's an insult that works on so many levels!

UPDATE 6/14
Everyone liked it, a lot. It's not something I feel like I have fully processed yet, so I don't want to jump straight ahead to a five-star rating. I did read it a second time and some new themes jumped out at me: the inadequacy of poetry (and the publishing world in general), the nature of friendships, vanity vs. practicality... I still think there is a thesis inside me regarding the poems that Joanna recites, and I did look a few up, but I really don't have time to analyze all the poems individually and in context. I wonder how much of the frankness about sex and body image is an artifact of England, of the 1960s (when it was written), or of post-war London. The calorie counting was something else entirely!

The May of Teck Club was an extraordinarily delightful community. I was sorry to see it go, both as a book and as a fictional establishment.

During book club, we decided that a 7 x 14 inch space was just inadequate for even the smallest person to get through. I have some stair railing spaces that are 7 1/2 by 17 and I got through partway. My boobs got stuck but could be forced through, but there was no way I could have made my hips fit. I think the smaller women would have had no problems slipping through that space. I can't imagine how fat Jane was supposed to be, though. They kept calling her fat but it was such a time of deprivation.

Not a very articulate response to the book I'm afraid. (less)

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Dec 04, 2009 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a story that really seemed to give a feel for the times which it covered. Or it's good at faking it for someone that I guess wouldn't know any better. The characters are thinly drawn, but that seems to be the point, to give a few attributes, let us see their biggest worries or love or action and read into it for more. The surprising ending really pulled the book together, made the present/past aspect and the various stories work, though it felt a bit quick, could have been drawn out mor...more

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About Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), considered her...more

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Books by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver's Seat, The Only Problem (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics)

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“...it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.” — 19 people liked it

“after thirty years' hostile fellowship with Collie, of course she did quite well understand that collie had a habit of skipping several stages in the logical sequence of her thoughts and would utter apparently disconnected statements, especially when confused by unfamiliar subject or the presence of a man” — 1 person liked it

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