The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark is one of the Ninety- Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939, A Personal Choice of Anthony Burgess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-nine_Novels and one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction 9 out of 10

 The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark is one of the Ninety- Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939, A Personal Choice of Anthony Burgess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-nine_Novels and one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

9 out of 10

 

 

Perhaps the best known novel written by Muriel Spark is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-note-on-prime-of-miss-jean-brodie-by.html, but the author has another three works on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, including The Girls of Slender Means, Loitering With Intent and a Far Cry From Kensington, all them considered comedies, though they are tragedies too…

 

‘Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor allowing for exceptions…Few people were more delightful, more ingenious, more lovely, and more Savage than the Girls of Slender Means’ this is how we learn about the protagonists of the book and we get somehow attached to them, and sorry when we learn that this is not all Days of Wine and Roses – a spectacular film with Jack Lemmon http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/08/days-of-wine-and-roses-written-by-jp.html - and tragedies happen in the story.

This takes place after all during the war, and at the end of it, indeed, there is a scene when the crowds are gathered to celebrate the victory over the Nazis, with the royal family at the balcony, saluting the population, but while there is plenty of reason to cheer, one man – was he a sailor – stabs a woman (at that stage, they did not have the notion of gender fluidity, and we can play around this game and put they, just in case, but wtf, let us just go with a woman, and not ‘birthing person’, which seems to be the new definition in ultra-liberal circles at this time) taking advantage of the immense numbers that are gathered and with all squeezed so close, Nicholas Farrington sees the crime, but there is not much, if anything he can do about it, he tries to throw a paper at him, but everyone is packed in…

Nicholas Farington is one of the outré figures that are at the center of the story, one who appears to be ‘liberal’, for the times anyway, only to end up dad in…Haiti, something we do not need a spoiler alert for, because it is announced early on, and the way the narrative works is we jump ahead and back in time, knowing about the strange trajectory of this character, and some of the others in advance…

 

Maybe affected by a bomb that goes off and kills someone (let us not reveal all) Nicholas becomes a preacher (of sorts) and there is doubt and debate over what would cause that transformation, from one who was ready to party, even have sex on the flat roof of the house – he has had access from the hotel nearby, he had had a connection with the Secret Agencies and then could climb up to the upper floor and the attic, while Selina Redwood would be able to squeeze out through a slit window, given her Slender Figure (alas, not many of the other Slender Means Girls were so thin, and in an emergency, they would not be able to escape through the small way out, and there would be some tragic and also jocular moments associated with that small aperture) and they will be enjoying their liberty…

 

There is even a Romanian fellow within, Rudi Bittesch, and in spite of this very strange name for our place here – never heard of anyone called Bittesch, or Rudi for that matter, in this land, though that is evidently the lawyer of one of the most ferocious, calamitous, preposterous, ludicrous leaders the world has known, the one calling himself ‘a very stable genius’, braggadocio that thinks passing the test given to boxers to see if they are conscious (or some such thing) is testimony to his capacity, and that of his ‘incredibly big brain’- we should have a special feeling for the character, if only he were a bit more dazzling.

Apparently, the image we have is not wonderful…there has been a survey, a few years back, and in Europe or the EU, I do not remember which, the least liked (euphemism for most hated probably) nationality was…us, and the more unexpected thing is the places where we had had such low popularity – or high level of contempt – at the top of the list were Croatia and…Denmark and you have to wonder Mary, Joseph and Jesus, why on earth would the liberal, acclaimed, happy, role model Scandinavians, even if just one segment of them, would take such a stand, and though some of the reasons are clear, it would have to do with begging, stealing in the middle of their cities, relying upon social welfare, without proper justification often, still, there are economic explanations, which they should understand…

 

Besides, they would be appalled and outraged, to hear their argument used against the Roma community – incidentally, those who are involved in the types of crimes that they have come to reject and hate so much are predominantly from that minority – those who have been oppressed, discriminated against for such a long time, using the ‘evidence’ of their criminal activities, which when they happen, they do because they had been kept at the edge of or outside societies and they have the same attitude confronting them in the most holy of places, Scandinavia, which turns out to be so good at preaching, but not doing as in that silly proverb with ‘do what the clergy says, not what they do’

I have had my own experience decades ago, when driving through Austria, in Germany, where people would not offer the tiniest of support – when asking about a problem we had with the car in gas stations, they look with disgust and just say ‘assitanz’, meaning call the hugely expensive for us at the time truck that would take your jalopy and then you would have to pay twice what the car cost for the trip, until one of maybe seventy would pity us enough to say put some additive in the tank and it would work, which it did, for it was freezing cold and the diesel needed some oomph, some chemical to make it work and not freeze or something…

 

I started by saying that albeit the novel is included in the comedy section of to read lists, has some very tragic events in the plot, but to conclude, there is also a lot of felicity inside, the letters sent to writers, with the hope that they will sign a note that would later be sold – Maugham is labeled as ‘cynical towards human nature – then ‘Nicholas said they need marriage, heaps of sex, every night for a month, then every other night for two months, then three times a week for a year, after that, once a week…’ which brings us to the Coolidge Effect, in another guise, The Honeymoon Effect that you can check on the net, where you also find the article in Newsweek that mentions yours truly, Realini

 

http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html


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