The Girls of Slender Means

Posted on | March 18, 2010 | 7 Comments

I am still reeling from reading Memento Mori by Muriel Spark last month and I went into The Girls of Slender Means hoping for a similar experience; it is not nearly as vindictive or as sinister as its predecessor but it is as mordantly witty.  The ironic title (ironic in its double-play on the word “slender” which is meaningful once you read the book and realise that not all the girls are slender enough to squeeze through a window) refers to a group of girls living in The May of Teck Club, a boarding house for young ladies (below the age of thirty) living and working away from their families in London.  Set in Kensington in the immediate post-World War II period, between VE Day and VJ Day, the girls of slender means are a disparate group whose lives, loves and sociological condition in 1945, when rationing is still in effect, are examined in the novella.

The framing story occurs in 1963 as Jane, one of the group and main characters, contacts her fellow housemates and acquaintances to inform them of the “martyring” of Nicholas Farringdon, a poet they knew in 1954, in Haiti; the novella flashbacks to events in 1945 and exchanges between Nicholas and the women. To begin with I found the structure a little disorientating and the novella is so short that, by the time I had adjusted, it was soon over.  Spark is so nuanced a writer that I find that reading her too quickly  or too casually will serve only to have most of the events go over my head and after the first forty or so pages I had to slow it down some and fully concentrate to appreciate the story and Spark’s caustic subtleties.

Each of the girls had something different to offer, each had their own unique personality. Jane, particularly, was my favourite girl of slender means; I found her use of chocolate as brain-food for her brain-work  amusing and later on as dutch courage.

Jane got up, ran to her room, and with animal instinct snatched and gobbled a block of chocolate which remained on her table.  The sweet stuff assisted her recovery.

Jane works in publishing and as a side-line she makes money from selling the letters of famous writers; she plots how best to con the writers into responding in their own hand, which goes for a higher price, by tailoring outrageous sob stories for each writer, with amusing responses, particularly that of Gerard Manley Hopkins.  Jane, like the other girls, is simply making ends meet in an impoverished period of history; the girls barter with tea, charm men for meals and clothing ration vouchers, and share a Schiaparelli gown amongst themselves, a dress they would retrieve from a burning building.

Although The Girls of Slender Means doesn’t pack quite the same punch as Memento Mori, it does possess a delightfully serrated edge.

As they realized themselves in varying degrees, few people alive at the time were more delightful, more ingenious, more movingly lovely, and, as it might happen, more savage, than the girls of slender means.

*I’ve gone home to visit family and friends for a few days; I have scheduled a few posts, including this one, but replying to comments and blog reading will be sporadic, at least.

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A book blog written by a reader who enjoys The Beatles and who is not wholly averse to hardbacks.

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