num_pages: 176
description: THE MAIN ACTION of this new novel by the gifted author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie takes place in London during the spring and summer months of 1945 between V-E Day and V-J Day. The girls of the title, some plump and some slender, live in the May of Teck Club ("three times window-shattered since 1940 but never directly hit"), which is a haven for young ladies "who are obliged to reside apart-from their families in order to follow an Occupation in London." Some years later, the mysterious death of a religious missionary in Haiti awakens their memories of the time "long ago in 1945" when "all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions." Among the girls the martyr knew at the May of Teck Club were a plump, but determined assistant to a seedy and not exactly ethical publisher, a country rector's daughter who gave elocution lessons with special rates to her fellow residents, an elegant, amorous beauty whose nocturnal excursions included assignations on a nearby roof, a debutante niece of one of the club's titled sponsors, and three older spinsters, left over from pre-war days, who formed a sort of chorus of critical duennas for the younger set. Beneath the farce of girls sliding through a slit-window in the club bathroom onto the roof, lurks the phantom, death. And in a part farcical, part wholly realistic climax, Mrs. Spark brings together, with her customary adroitness, the threads of gaiety and grimness, of practiced poise and hidden anxieties, of giddy dormitory conversations and silent religious convictions.
language: English
title: The Girls of Slender Means
titlecomplete: The Girls of Slender Means
characters: Nicholas Farringdon, Selina Redwood, Jane Wright
genres: Fiction, British Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Novella, Literary Fiction, Audiobook
ratings_count: 7019
places: England, London, England
publisher: MacMillan