3.5 Very good short story. Great Spark humour and wonderful dialog but lacked the depth of some of her other work.
Poetry is the theme that links the various elements of the plot.
"Joanne Childe had been drawn to this profession by her good voice and love of poetry which she loved rather as it might be assumed a cat loves birds; poetry, especially the declamatory sort, excited and possessed her; she would pounce on the stuff, play with it quivering in her mind, and when she had got it by the heart, she spoke it forth with devouring relish."
As Violet Wells review points out, the roof of the charity home, the May of Teck Club (itself a character in the story), is a mysterious world of adventure and sanctuary, but can only be accessed from the top floor girls bathroom, and only by women who are extremely slender, naked, and smeared with precious lubricant, and an interesting view of worlds beyond the club. Set between the German and Japanese WW2 surrenders in a bombed out but surprising cheerful London of ration books and deprivations, where the search for love overcomes all such shortcomings and the cast of oddballs runs around having for the most part a jolly fine time. ( )

This is mainly set between VE & VJ day in London. Set in the May of Teck club, the house is an organisation that offers rooms and society to girls who have moved to London for work. We meet a number of the girls, mostly those living on the top floor. They all come vividly to life (as does the Schiaparelli dress, which leads a life more exciting than the girls!). Into this comes Nicholas Farringdon. We hear about him as he aims to get a book published in the timeframe and also as he's been martyred in a future timeframe. I wondered how this was going to end, and it does with a bang. It also is potentially the cause of the events we hear about in the future. It is a fascinating slice of life at a very different time, and feels like a period piece. I wonder if it did at the time, being written almost 20 years after the period the bulk of the book is set. ( )

This short novel presents us with a slice of life in bombed out London shortly after the end of World War II for a group of young women living at the May of Teck Club, a sort of boarding home for "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." We follow the lives of Jane Wright, who is fat, but does "brainwork," Anne Baberton, owner of the Schiaparelli gown shared among the girls, Joanna Childe, teacher of elocution, Selena Redwood, "the only woman present who could afford to loll, the three spinsters, Collie, Greggie, and Jarvis's, and several others. There is a "before and after" in this book, and the story alternates between the two. Spark's writing is witty and precise--the bombed out houses were like "giant teeth in which decay had been drilled out, leaving only the cavity," and the book conveys a great sense of time and place. I liked this book very much.

4 stars

First line: "Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions."
Last line: "Nicholas marveled at her stamina, recalling her in this image years later in the country of his death--how she stood, sturdy and bare-legged on the dark grass, occupied with her hair--as if this was an image of all the May of Teck establishment in its meek, unselfconscious attitudes of poverty, long ago in 1945. ( )

Earlier this year I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brody and fell in love with Muriel Spark's writing. So, when I had the chance to read this one, The Girls of Slender Means, I jumped at it. The characters and writing were all I had hoped for. However, to be honest I still prefer The Prime of Miss Jean Brody and if you're only going to read one book by this author, I'd recommend that one.

Recommend for fans of the author or classics in general. ( )

Book club read. On first read disappointed. On second reading (and in daytime when less tired) I got more from it. Well crafted. ( )