The Girls of Slender Means

Rating:
Summary: A Little Confusing
Review: Don't get me wrong this was a good book but I got confused with all the characters. It kind of jumped around from person to person and from the past to the present. It was interesting reading about the stories of each of the girls. It didn't really seem to follow a story line. The story finally began to come together at the great ending then just kind of stopped. Not the best book I've ever read but its worth reading anyway.

Rating:
Summary: What¿s Wrong With This Picture?
Review: I enjoyed settling down with this interesting vignette of the lives and times of a group of single women in a hostel in London in the spring of 1945. The war in Europe has ended, and these unconquerable gals have survived. They have lived through the blitz; survived on low rations; and have kept their social world going by sharing one fancy dress among themselves. Blaring radios, and shrieks of laughter permeate the old building that has been their home for the last several years. Their amorous adventures have been fleeting ones in accord with the uncertainties of a world at war. We are now seeing them all as the first days of the rest of their lives are about to begin.

Ah, but Ms. Spark is not telling us this story just to provide an evening's light entertainment. A tragedy occurs that once again points out the absurdity of war. It is sad that there has been no time in any of our lives when this message is obsolete. It's a short novel, almost a short story writ long, but it doesn't need to be any longer than it is. The author has taken just the amount of time she has needed to paint her colorful literary portrait...and then put a big smudge right in the middle of it.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but fragmentary
Review: Muriel Spark recreates a world that has long since vanished in her depiction of the May of Teck club, a residence for young single women . The story takes place during the final year of World War II. There are frequent changes in viewpoint and time period which became distracting. It is clear that Spark is interested in the sound of words in all their richness and haphazardness, but the collaging strategy takes force from the final tragedy. Lurking behind the narrative are a cast of characters possessing various degrees of egoism and spirtituality. The most fully drawn is Jane, a young woman employed in "the world of books." One of her unusual modes of employment is writing fake fan letters to living famous authors on behalf of a collector in the hopes of receiving handwritten replies. In her we find an idealized perspective on the literary world blended with pragmatism in her machinations. Other personalities reside at the edge of the narration and their motivations are difficult to credit. I am fairly sure that Spark is pointing out the ambiguities of our psyches, but she stacks the deck against any efforts we might make to discover what makes the characters tick.

Rating:
Summary: a choppy beginning- a magnificent end
Review: there are so many girls at the may of teck club ( group housing for 'the girls of slender means)- with so many third person points of view, that one almost needs a chart to keep them straight- who's rationing what? who's dating whom?

a few of the girls stand out, but their tales are so intermingled, & their lives so distantly described that i had a hard time caring. but as a fan of muriel spark's work, i kept at it, and was well paid off by the poignant & shocking ending.

spark did quite the job of showing the reader wartime london- with its' almost purposeful frivolities, willfullness to get on, and its' crushing realities.

i recommend it to fans of her work. i suggest starting with the 'prime of miss jean brodie' if you've had no prior introduction.

Rating:
Summary: Another Delightful Spark Novel
Review: This is one of Muriel Spark's most deftly written novels, right up there with her best: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Comforters. The writing here glimmers with wit and polish. It is as if the smartiest, wittiest, greatest storyteller in your life were telling this to you over the best dinner of your life in a cafe in Nice; you've gone through two bottles of wine, the candles are dying and the staff is dying to go home---but you must hear the story to the end! And when you do, you smile all over. You are thrilled to have been told this devilish tale.

Rating:
Summary: The body has a life of its own.
Review: This small novel has too many characters and too many themes (intelligence work, coupon smuggling, the 'literature' business, religion, sex and love -'Love and money were vital themes in all bedrooms.')
Also, the allegories are a little overstretched, e.g. a bomb for a war that didn't end with the armistice, or the fate of the girl who believes that 'once you admit that you can change the object of a strongly-felt affection, you undermine the whole structure of love and marriage.'
The action of the latter part of the novel is caused by a deus ex machina.
On the other hand, it gives a lively portrait of poverty-stricken London after World War II with food-rationing. Also, the elliptic writing and the use of poem excerpts were captivating.
But all in all, not a convincing work.