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.<br /><br />Chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the Best Modern Novels in the <em>Sunday Times</em> of London, <em>The Girls of Slender Means</em> is a taut and eerily perfect novel by an author <em>The New York Times</em> has called "one of this century's finest creators of comic-metaphysical entertainment."