SPARK**, MURIEL:
THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS.
Imprint: LONDON.MACMILLAN,1963.
Edition: UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.
Binding:
Hardback
,
With Dust Jacket
Inscription: Not SIGNED.
UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.NFINE/NFINE.Neat, black ink owner inscrptn to top of front free endpaper and no price-clip to dw/dj. Bright,crisp,clean,glossy,maroon and grey/ blue marble effect colour illustrated dw/dj,with white lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no major nicks or tears present.Ubiquitous,but very miniscule rubbing with reciprocal loss to 3 corners - the top two and front lower. Top+fore-edges though lightly toned are generally bright and clean,with some minimal,sporadic spotting/foxing; contents bright,tight,clean,solid and sound - near pristine - text body clean,no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners, appears unread - apart from my own collation.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,publisher's original plain blue cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked
gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers - owner inscrptn excepted.UK,slim 8vo HB+dw/dj, 1st edn,1-182pp [paginated] includes 9 chapters; plus [unpaginated] book's precis,title page,dedication,last page unpaginated and 2pp blanks at the rear.
'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.' The time is 1945,the sombre yet curiously carefree and vital months between VE and VJ Days.The Girls of Slender Means live
in the May of Teck Club,an imposing edifice opposite the Albert Memorial,which exists 'for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of thirty years,
obliged to reside apart from their families in order to follow an occupation in London'.
Through the girls - and their occupations and friends - Mrs Spark presents a brilliant microcosm of life at this point in history,restlessly poised between war and peace.But,as always in Mrs Spark's writings,the recorded events are seen from a viewpoint which lifts them out of the purely temporal context of her story and sharply reminds the reader of eternity from time to time.The seemingly settled pattern of life at the May of Teck Club is subtly changed by the appearance of Nicholas Farringdon,one of the poet-anarchists of the time,later to be martyred in Haiti.
The reactions of the girls to the unexpected but revealing situations in which they find themselves makes a novel which is vintage Spark,funny,poignant and a sheer delight to read.
View my 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die catalogue for other books and suggested reading in it.
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Stock number: rja646616. ISBN: No ISBN.
Bookseller's details and sales conditions: R. J. A. PAXTON-DENNY
£ 65.00 (approx. $US 84.59 ) | 
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