The Girls of Slender Means New Directions Classic

1998-04-17

The novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds.

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

ISBN: 9780811221047

Category: Fiction

Page: 140

View: 899

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"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions," begins The Girls of Slender Means, Dame Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club itself—"three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit"—its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal: practicing elocution, and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. The novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds. Chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the Best Modern Novels in the Sunday Times of London, The Girls of Slender Means is a taut and eerily perfect novel by an author The New York Times has called "one of this century's finest creators of comic-metaphysical entertainment."
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Memento Mori

1965

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher:

ISBN: OCLC:896185738

Category:

Page: 287

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Lovely Things to Make for Girls of Slender Means

2010

Provides information on basic sewing skills to create and refashion a variety of clothing items on a limited budget.

Author: Eithne Farry

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited

ISBN: 0297859544

Category: Crafts & Hobbies

Page: 224

View: 741

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Provides information on basic sewing skills to create and refashion a variety of clothing items on a limited budget.
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

2004

In four short works of contemporary fiction that probe metaphysical truths, a charismatic teacher has a devastating impact on her students, young women struggle for survival in a post-war London hostel, a woman searches for her own death, ...

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: Everyman Paperback Classics

ISBN: 1857152743

Category: Girls

Page: 462

View: 129

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The brevity of Muriel Spark's novels is equaled only by their brilliance. These four novels, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrate her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all four are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit. Spark's most celebrated novel, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, tells the story of a charismatic schoolteacher's catastrophic effect on her pupils. THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS is a beautifully drawn portrait of young women living in a hostel in London in the giddy postwar days of 1945. THE DRIVER'S SEAT follows the final haunted hours of a woman descending into madness. And THE ONLY PROBLEM is a witty fable about suffering that brings the Book of Job to bear on contemporary terrorism. All four novels give evidence of one of the most original and unmistakable voices in contemporary fiction. Characters are vividly etched in a few words; earth-shaking events are lightly touched on. Yet underneath the glittering surface there is an obsessive probing of metaphysical questions: the meaning of good and evil, the need for salvation, the search for significance.
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The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark

2003

Presents a collection of ghost stories, including "The Hanging Judge," "The Seraph and the Zambesi," and "The Portobello Road."

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

ISBN: 0811215490

Category: Fiction

Page: 135

View: 723

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Presents a collection of ghost stories, including "The Hanging Judge," "The Seraph and the Zambesi," and "The Portobello Road."
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Omnibus 2

1994

Includes "Loitering with intent", "The girls of slender means", "The abbess of Crewe", "The bachelors", and "The ballad of Peckham Rye".

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher:

ISBN: 0094727805

Category:

Page: 624

View: 874

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Includes "Loitering with intent", "The girls of slender means", "The abbess of Crewe", "The bachelors", and "The ballad of Peckham Rye".
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New York Magazine

1988-08-01

Returning to the milieu of The Girls of Slender Means (a rooming house in
postwar London) and the matter of Loitering With Intent (publishing and
conspiracy), Spark chooses her words as if she had to pay for them with ration
coupons, deftly ...

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN:

Category:

Page: 96

View: 410

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New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.
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Symposium

2006

"Symposium" was applauded by "Time" magazine for the "sinister elegance" of Muriel Spark's "medium of light but lethal comedy." Mixed in are a Monet, a mad uncle, some unconventional nuns, and a burglary ring run by a rent-a-butler.

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

ISBN: 0811216594

Category: Fiction

Page: 192

View: 510

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Dame Muriel Spark delivers a delightfully alarming novel, full of high society and low cunning. One October evening five posh London couples gather for a dinner party, enjoying "the pheasant (flambe in cognac as it is)" and waiting for the imminent arrival of the late-coming guest Hilda Damien, who has been unavoidably detained due to the fact that she is being murdered at this very moment... "Symposium" was applauded by "Time" magazine for the "sinister elegance" of Muriel Spark's "medium of light but lethal comedy." Mixed in are a Monet, a mad uncle, some unconventional nuns, and a burglary ring run by a rent-a-butler. Symposium stars a perfectly evil young woman (a classic sweet-faced hair-raising Sparkian horror) who has married rich Hilda's son by hook or by crook, hooking him at the fruit counter of Harrod's. There is also spiritual conversation--and the Bordeaux is superb. "The prevailing mood is urbane: the wine is poured, the talk continues, and all the time the ice on which the protagonists' world rests is being thinned from beneath, by boiling emotions and ugly motives....No living writer handles the tension between formality of expression and subversiveness of thought more elegantly." ("The Independent on Sunday").
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The Women of Muriel Spark

1992

Selina Redwood : The Girls of Slender Means A first reading of The Girls of
Slender Means would not , until the end , reveal the devastating power of Selina
Redwood . She is notable because of her attractive , slim body , and she
impresses ...

Author: Judy Sproxton

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015025193015

Category: Women in literature

Page: 158

View: 623

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All the Stories of Muriel Spark

2001

All the Stories of Muriel Spark spans Dame Muriel Spark's entire career to date and displays all her signature stealth, originality, beauty, elegance, wit, and shock value.No writer commands so exhilarating a styleplayful and rigorous, ...

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

ISBN: 081121494X

Category: Fiction

Page: 398

View: 416

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Four brand new tales are now added to New Directions' original 1997 cloth edition of Open to the Public. This new and complete paperback edition now contains every one of her forty-one marvelous stories, catnip for all Spark fans. All the Stories of Muriel Spark spans Dame Muriel Spark's entire career to date and displays all her signature stealth, originality, beauty, elegance, wit, and shock value.No writer commands so exhilarating a styleplayful and rigorous, cheerful and venomous, hilariously acute and coolly supernatural. Ranging from South Africa to the West End, her dazzling stories feature hanging judges, fortune-tellers, shy girls, psychiatrists, dress designers, pensive ghosts, imaginary chauffeurs, and persistent guests. Regarding one story ("The Portobello Road"), Stephen Schiff said in The New Yorker: "Muriel Spark has written some of the best sentences in English. For instance: 'He looked as if he would murder me, and he did.' It's a nasty piece of work, that sentence."
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The Driver s Seat

2014-05-27

The Driver’s Seat, Spark’s own favorite among her many novels, was hailed by the New Yorker as “her spiny and treacherous masterpiece.” Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday — in search of passionate adventure ...

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

ISBN: 9780811221368

Category: Fiction

Page: 112

View: 502

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The Driver’s Seat, Spark’s own favorite among her many novels, was hailed by the New Yorker as “her spiny and treacherous masterpiece.” Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday — in search of passionate adventure and sex. In this metaphysical shocker, infinity and eternity attend Lise’s last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.
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The Arena

1901

vousness of women , it was attributed to various things — even to inoffensive
health foods ; but no one mentioned the ... households and the girls and women
of slender means with whom they come in daily contact in the shops and streets .

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: WISC:89063082341

Category: United States

Page:

View: 924

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All the Poems of Muriel Spark

2004

A collection of the author's poems covers such topics as European cities and the literary world.

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

ISBN: 0811215768

Category: Poetry

Page: 130

View: 450

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A collection of the author's poems covers such topics as European cities and the literary world.
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Muriel Spark

1984

The Girls of Slender Means TUI INVIDOITV OL Sharp delineation of a group of
young women who are closely associated in an institution , related The Girls of
Slender Means to Spark ' s immediately preceding novel , The Prime of Miss
Jean ...

Author: Velma Bourgeois Richmond

Publisher: Ungar Publishing Company

ISBN: UOM:39015009307789

Category: Women and literature

Page: 197

View: 287

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Discusses the development of Muriel Spark's literary career, examines the themes of each of her novels, and analyzes her poetry, plays, and short stories
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Curriculum Vitae

2011

Muriel Spark's bracingly salty memoir is a no-holds-barred trip through an extraordinary writer's life.

Author: Muriel Spark

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

ISBN: 0811219232

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 222

View: 404

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Muriel Spark's bracingly salty memoir is a no-holds-barred trip through an extraordinary writer's life.
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Religion Literature

1992

They are : The Bachelors ( 1960 ) , The Girls of Slender Means ( 1963 ) , The
Mandelbaum Gate ( 1965 ) , The Abbess of Crewe ( 1974 ) , and The Takeover (
1976 ) . In a stunning and carefully crafted study , Edgecombe elaborates on the
way ...

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: UVA:X002473078

Category: Literature

Page:

View: 932

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Unresolved Dualities in the Novels of Muriel Spark

1973

ve ues with Sandy Stranger , and can be seen again , obliquely , in the character
of Nicholas Farringdon , of The Girls of Slender Means . Once again , Farringdon
is a typical Sparkean protagonist , engaged in a conflict of sexual identity , trying
 ...

Author: Gerry Starr Laffin

Publisher:

ISBN: WISC:89010822690

Category:

Page: 670

View: 887

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Saturday Review

1963-07

... SR's Check List of Current Books LITERARY HORIZONS 33 Literary Horizons :
Granville Hicks reviews “ The Girls of Slender Means , " by Muriel Spark 34
Return of the Personal Publisher , by David Dempsey 35 JFK : The Man and the
Myth ...

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015085541640

Category: American literature

Page:

View: 210

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