Books acquired, 26 May 2020

I dropped by the bookstore yesterday to pick up some more books by Muriel Spark. I finished her novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie over the Memorial Day weekend and was hungry for more. I picked out Loitering with Intent and The Girls of Slender Means, mostly because of the covers and titles.

I read about half of The Girls of Slender Means yesterday and this morning, and it’s really good. Set primarily “Long ago in 1945,” Girls focuses on a few months in the lives of some of the titular inhabitants of the “May of Teck Club.” The narrator dips between the consciousness of a few of these “girls of good family but slender means,” but focuses primarily on Jane Wright, a would-be member of the “world of books” whose 1963 phone calls to some of the other “girls” frames the narrative proper. It’s witty stuff, occasionally vicious, and even includes some literary hoaxing! I’ll probably finish it tonight.

I also picked up John Domini’s collection of literary criticism, The Sea-God’s Herb, which I’ve been wanting to pick through for ages now. When I spied the unbroken spine, I assumed it was new, but no–just unread. I opened it up to find the price and saw that not only was the book used (half cover price), it was signed by the author. On top of that, this copy was inscribed to another author, a somewhat-famous sci-fi writer (you might have seen a recent film adaptation of one of his novels). Anyway, it was a strange find.