Having introduced you to author Muriel Spark here and here, today we revisit with a look at her novella, The Girls of Slender Means.

The scene is the May of Teck Club, a boardinghouse for young single women trying their luck in London. Life at the Club includes a dinner hour, meetings about rules and, occasionally, a guest speaker.

As the title suggests, nobody here is the gentry. World War II wound up only yesterday. The smell of the bombs still sits in their nostrils. In fact, a bomb landed in the May of Teck’s garden, but authorities evacuated the residents and carried the bomb away.

Otherwise, life is all about austerity, every British citizen hoarding, trading, even giving out as favors, their ration coupons. And they need coupons for everything from clothes to butter.

Above the Club’s common rooms live the nobodies, the youngest and silliest residents, jammed together in communal quarters. With each successive floor, the Club’s vibe changes from boardinghouse to sorority house. The girls on the top floor enjoy private rooms and access to the flat roof of the building, if — and this is a Big If — they can slither themselves through a tiny bathroom window.

Somewhere in there live the Club’s three spinsters, an anomaly in a place where they expect you to move on by age thirty, preferably by finding a husband.

This comedy of manners stars Jane. Poor Jane could live on dry toast and cottage cheese ‘til next Christmas and still not fit through that bathroom window. And anyway, she needs the padding to keep warm in her gas-metered room, where she secretly writes poetry.

There’s Selina, who can slip through the window. Pretty handy for meeting her men friends, both single and married, who sneak over from a neighboring hotel roof.

There’s Joanna, a preacher’s daughter, who offers elocution lessons night and day.

Every girl here probably wishes she could break out for some better place. But don’t go yet, ladies. Your May of Teck Club lives are too much fun for the reader. We like peeking in on your days. We like watching you entertain suitors in the common room and we like watching your suitors gaze longingly at Selina. We like hearing Joanna and her elocution students echoing loudly from the hallways above like some always-on wireless.

Photo: Deposit photos

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