Read what you know?

When I noticed the title on the list, I was immediately drawn to it. When I read the description of the hostel/boarding house, the May of Teck Club which is the center of the story, I nodded my head in recognition: "The May of Teck Club exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London." Seriously. Just flash forward 66 years and switch the location to DC, and you have me. Well, not really, but still. I loved that description. The young ladies of slender means under 30 in DC should form a club; the best part is, we already have a name!

Anyway, I really enjoyed Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means. It's more a novella than a novel. It's set in London right before and right after the end of WWII, and follows the trials of several residents of the May of Teck Club. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that this was by the same author as Up the Down Staircase, when it really is by the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I don't know why I had that mixed up, though I do tend to associate those two books in my head (I read them right around the same time ages ago in Phoenix; I vividly remember checking them out of the Juniper Branch library; weird). That said, stylistically it is just like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and once I got that confusion out of the way everything started to make sense.

I also recently read Black Dogs by Ian McEwan. If you follow this blog, you know that I adore McEwan, so it should come as no surprise that I loved this one. There is just something so beautiful about the way that he writes. It was also incredibly short, but it's one where you do have to just stop and re-read some passages. Strangely, they part that effected me the most was actually in the prologue when he described leaving his young niece when he went to college.

Like most McEwan's, this novel explores the impact of single moments on people's life trajectories. There's the obvious instance of the black dogs themselves, which shape the whole story the author is telling (and by author, I mean the protagonist who is ostensibly writing a memoir; I know I've complained about that convention in the past, but either a) it works for McEwan or b) I give him an unfair pass, you decide). However, I was also struck by how McEwan contrasted those moments with the moments the characters wanted to make meaningful or telling in their lives. For example, one character wanted the fall of the Berlin Wall to really matter in his life personally and felt a disappointment by the disconnect. I loved those contrasts, between the moments we want to infuse with meaning and the moments that take us by surprise but change everything. But yes, Saturday is still my favorite.