The girls of slender means
By: Muriel Spark.
Series: New Directions classics
Publisher: New Directions Pub.
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 141
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945 -- England -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
Description: 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.