London, just after the second world war. Basic necessities are scarce, food and clothes are being rationed. Somewhere in the city there is an old residential building turned into a dormitory which was spared from the Nazi bombings. Here is found the May of Teck Club and its first of the Rules of Constitution explains what it is:"The May of Teck Club exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London."The May of Teck Club, in other words, is a cheap dormitory in London for working girls below 30 years of age who have very little money ["of slender means":]. With different characters and personal circumstances, I had more enjoyment reading this book than when I watched the two Bridget Jones movies. Reading this was, indeed, very much like watching a movie but with the added bonus of Muriel Spark's never boring prose. Maybe a sample is in order. Brief backgrounder on the characters involved in this particular scene:Selina - the beauty at the May of Teck Club. Quite a playgirl [she has a hilarious scene towards the end when the building was on fire and about to collapse:];Felix/the Colonel - married to Gareth [not a May of Teck resident:] and having an affair with Selina;Jane - another girl at the May of Teck Club, works for a publisher, and has literary pretentions;Rudi Bittesch - a publisher, Jane's boss;Nicholas - a handsome cad [Hugh Grant would be perfect for the role, if in a movie:], thinks of himself as a good poet/writer but isn't really so. Submitted a novel to Rudi Bittesch for publication and got acquianted with Jane. Jane, in turn, showed him off at the May of Teck club where Selina met him.Scene: Jane, Felix, Selina and Nicholas decided to take an outing using Felix's car:"He [Felix:] was about thirty-two. He was one of Selina's weak men. His weakness was an overwhelming fear of his wife, so that he took great pains not to be taken unawares in bed with Selina on their country week-ends, even although his wife was in California. As he locked the door of the bedroom Felix would say, very worried, 'I wouldn't like to hurt Gareth,' or some such thing. The first time he did this Selina looked through the bathroom door; tall and beautiful with wide eyes, she looked at Felix to see what was the matter with him. He was still anxious and tried the door again. On the late Sunday mornings, when the bed was already uncomfortable with breakfast crumbs, he would sometimes fall into a muse and be far away. He might then say, 'I hope there's no way Gareth could come by knowledge of this hideout.' And so he was one of those who did not want to possess Selina entirely; and being beautiful and liable to provoke possessiveness, she found this all right provided the man was attractive to sleep with and be out with, and was a good dancer. Felix was blond with an appearance of reserved nobility which he must have inherited. He seldom said anything very humorous, but was willing to be gay. On this Sunday afternoon in the May of Teck Club he proposed to drive to Richmond, which was a long way by car from Knightsbridge in those days when petrol was so scarce that nobody went driving for pleasure except in an American's car, in the vague mistaken notion that their vehicles were supplied by 'American' oil, and so were not subject to the conscience of British austerity or the reproachful question about the necessity of the journey displayed at all places of public transport."Jane, observing Selina's long glance of perfect balance and equanimity resting upon Nicholas, immediately foresaw that she would be disposed in the front seat with Felix while Selina stepped, with her arch-footed poise, into the back, where Nicholas would join her; and she foresaw that this arrangement would come about with effortless elegance. She had no objection to Felix, but she could not hope to win him for herself, having nothing to offer a man like Felix. She felt she had a certain something, though small, to offer Nicholas, this being her literary and brain-work side which Selina lacked. It was in fact a misunderstanding of Nicholas--she vaguely thought of him as a more attractive rudi Bittesch--to imagine he would receive more pleasure and reassurance from a literary girl than simply a girl. It was the girl in Jane that had moved him to kiss her at the party; she might have gone further with Nicholas without her literary leanings. This was a mistake she continued to make in her relations with men, inferring from her own preference for men of books and literature their preference for women of the same business. And it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls."But Jane was presently proved right in her prediciton about the seating arrangements in the car; and it was her repeated accuracy of intuition in such particulars as these which gave her confidence in her later career as a prophetic gossip-columnist."A prose that can force you to smile. I look forward to reading other Muriel Spark novels!
Spark at her best; acerbic, bitingly funny, satirical, unsettling, great use of language, numerous interesting and well-crafted characters, layers of meaning and it captures a moment of social history to boot. It captures the brief period of 1945 between VE day and VJ day, a period of three to four months. The novel (well novella really) centres on the May of Teck Club in Kensington. The club is“for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London”It is written from a later perspective (1963) by one of the girls from the club, Jane Wright. She is prompted to look back by the death of Nicholas Farringdon, who in 1945 was an anarchist, but had become a Jesuit priest. He has been martyred in Haiti and now his writings from 1945 are suddenly of interest. Spark introduces him to the reader in her own inimitable way;“We come now to Nicholas Farringdon in his thirty-third year. He was said to be an anarchist. No one at the May of Teck Club took this seriously as he looked quite normal: that is to say, he looked slightly dissipated, like the disappointing son of a good English family that he was.”One of the strengths Spark has is her characterization and this novel is no exception; even the minor characters are well drawn and some of Spark’s descriptions are really sharp. For example the warden of the club who “drove a car as she would have driven a man had she possessed one”. Spark employs the trick of muddling the chronology and she gives away bits of the plot as she goes along, using an omniscient third person. Although on the surface the dialogue and plot can appear shallow and rather inconsequential, there are layers of meaning and there is also an impending sense of threat. It will come as no surprise to regular Spark readers that farce turns into tragedy. The word Slender in the title has a double meaning. As well as meaning financially limited, it refers to the toilet window on one of the upper floors. The slimmer (slender) girls are able to get out of this window onto the roof. The roof was accessible to the building next door which was being rented by the Americans and amorous assignations were open to those slim enough to get through. It also plays a pivotal role at the end of the book. The layers of meaning are also fun. The religious connections are clear (Spark was a Catholic, though not a dogmatic one). One of the pivotal characters is Joanna Childe (her in initials are no coincidence; a female Christ figure!) an elocution teacher. Throughout most of the book you overhear her reciting to her pupils (usually The Wreck of the Deutschland, a poem by a priest, Hopkins, about a group of drowning nuns). There is a Satan figure (not obvious at first); the Paul figure is easier to spot. The role of the Schiaparelli dress is also fun to contemplate; a posh frock owned by one of the girls, but lent out for dates. The tragedy towards the end of the book is surprising, but not unexpected. However, at the very end of the book during the VJ day celebrations there is an act of violence perpetrated by a man on a woman (neither characters in the book) that is so shocking and surprising that it hits the reader almost physically. Spark is saying; ok so we have peace, it’s all over, but is the world a better place? Will things be better?It’s a great novel by in my opinion, one of the better writers of the twentieth century. It’s a snapshot of a bygone time, a spiritual novel with a comic tone that becomes ever bleaker and almost gothic. Spark was admired by her contemporaries. Evelyn Waugh wrote to her and said;“'Most novelists find there is one kind of book they can write (particularly humorous novelists) and go on doing it with variations until death. You seem to have an inexhaustible source”As William Boyd said; “We are in the hands of a great artist: the experience is both unsettling and exhilarating”. I heartily agree.
Do You like book The Girls Of Slender Means (1998)?
A frothy black-comic novella about a group of young ladies living and loving in London...only until it hits you that, no, it's more: it's a retelling of the Gospels inside a girls dorm. Spark couldn't have been more blatant: the [Spoiler Alert] one girl that perishes in the housefire - the one who remains the most selflessly calm, recites scripture and measures the hips of herself and her thirteen trapped companions - was named Joanna Childe. And from there I'm not really going out on a limb to suggest:Selina Redwood is Old Scratch Herself. Like Joanna, S.R. remains relatively calm throughout the apocalyptic emergency: the fire in the garden and the fall of their fragile postwar paradise. But, unlike J.C., she is more than slinky-slithery enough to climb in and out of the lavatory window twice: once to demonstrate (flaunt) ease of escape, and the second time to salvage the house's shared Schiaparelli dress. Yes, even as her housemates choke on smoke and await salvation (firemen hacking away at a bricked-off skylight) it's all about the dress. When Nicholas Farringdon - the alpha male of this twisted tale and Redwood's part-time lover - sees Selina later the encounter leaves her disenchanted. A bit on the cold side you might say: "She screamed. She couldn't stop screaming. It's a nervous reaction." A nervous reaction, or I give you that screaming is Satan's only sane reaction to being in the presence of the converted. The newly spotless. The lost-but-now-found. Because Farringdon is the stand-in here for Paul the Apostle. Fancies himself a dandy rogue, a poet and an anarchist. But after the disaster he joins The Catholic Order and departs from London to spread The Good Word.
—R.
This charming novella very much seems like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie's older, darker, more experienced sister. This book set in the tail end of the second world war, follows a group of young men staying at a hostel in London for young poor girls who work in the city. As with other Muriel Spark's the humour is sharp, the characters well formed and the dialogue instantly quotable and charming, however for some reason I don't really know why I didn't enjoy this book as much as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. This book starts as we follow indidvidual women and seperate plots but weaves together to create a mystery. As this book is very easy to read in that it has short chapters and even though it skips back and forth in time it is very easy to keep up.
—Susan Rose
Muriel Spark was a brilliant writer. Her novels are generally short but extremely dense with incident and feeling. They are simultaneously mainstream tales but also experimental works. Spark plays with time and viewpoints and the result is both strongly emotional and intellectually satisfying. A few years ago I read The Driver's Seat and thought it was a minor masterpiece. But this novel is as good, or perhaps even better.The atmosphere of London in the immediate aftermath of WWII is here evoked with admirable skill and lightness of touch; the slightly surreal nature of reality at that time comes across strongly in this novel about a hostel for women and a tragic event that happens as result of the war that has just ended. The characters are wonderfully drawn and the prose is exquisite. I look forward to reading more of Spark's novels in the near future.
—Rhys
