In its way, Spark's vignette, The Girls of Slender Means, is a bit like Eisenstaedt's famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day...IF it turned out that the sailor had a venereal disease, or a concealed knife.

The "Girls" are the residents of an endowment subsidized home for young single women who have come to London seeking employment. The year is 1945. Food rationing is still in effect. Nylons are currency. Bombed out buildings are commonplace. And explosive ordnance disposal units still ply their trade.

While a few of the women have remained in residence years beyond the founders' intended time limit, and chaperone like dorm proctors, most of the girls are in their early twenties. The loosely organized social milieu has the feel of a college sorority. In other words, a group simultaneously transient yet oddly bonded.

The novel, initially, appears to be a light hearted satire on young people preoccupied with dating, social status, communal living, and clothes - during that special springtime after WWII. The charactertures are precise and witty. Then an unexpected tragedy occurs which sears the frivolity into an eternal frieze - a Keatsian Grecian urn vintage 1945. The effect is touching and profound: a delicate portrait of transitory beauty. ( )

I was not expecting to enjoy this book but it turned out to be far more interesting and cleverer than I had expected. The lives, deaths and foolishness of a group of young women. ( )

I’d like to drop my trousers to the world , I am a girl of means (of slender means). ( )

This isn't a book that really stuck with me, but it's a good slice of post-war England with an ending that makes the story more meaningful than it otherwise might have been. ( )

A neat little fiction, wittily written and with the non-linear timeline that I've come to expect and enjoy with Spark. It only took a few hours to read, but I felt the time well invested. ( )