The Girls of Slender Means
This is the only novel of hers I've read, but Spark has a lot in common with Shirley Jackson: a keen ear for dialogue that on the surface says little, but reads volumes, a building aura of foreboding, and a sympathy for the outsider that doesn't exclude them from scrutiny.
'The Girls of Slender Means' is set in a boarding house for single young women in blitzed London in the last years of World War II. The girls make an effort to go about their lives: dating, work, sunning themselves on a hard-to-reach spot on the roof, but a repeated phone call in the future throughout the short novel hints at a disaster on the horizon.
Bitterly funny.
