Memento Mori

De: Muriel Spark

Narrado por: Nadia May

Muriel Spark's blackly comic masterwork begins with a voice on the telephone warning, "Remember, you must die." The recipient of the grim message is elderly Dame Lettie Colston, but soon 10 of Lettie's oldest friends also become targets of Death's anonymous herald. A bizarre investigation lays bare an intricate network of deception and disloyalty that binds together the vulnerable group of aging eccentrics.

From the internationally acclaimed author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie comes a provocative, disturbing, but hilarious tale of mortality, morality, and the phenomenon called old age.

©2003 Muriel Spark (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks

Reseñas de la Crítica

"A complex, beautiful, and terrifyingly insightful novel about old age.¿" (The New Yorker)
"Acidly funny tale of aging and death...a marvelously crafted, tautly written novel." (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Ealing Comedy...

Read for this month's Book Club, reminded me of an Ealing Comedy! I think I enjoyed it, at least some of it!

Great reading and hilarious and deep

The reader portrayed the various characters of which there are many, very convincingly. The narrative has many satisfying twists and turns as mortality is explored by mortals who can’t understand it.

Excellent Portrait of a “Certain Age”

This book contains a number of memorable characters whose reaction to aging is interesting, humorous, or foreboding. Very enjoyable.

An Exhilarating and Life-Enhancing Read

Being Muriel Spark’s “first masterpiece”, and “one of the great novels of the 1950’s”, Memento Mori lies far beyond my poor powers to add or subtract, let alone say anything very intelligent. So, my title is borrowed from David Lodge who, some ten years ago, wrote a retrospective review of the book for The Guardian. All I can do is agree; he identifies the variegated strands of the novelistic tradition that Spark re-wove into the kind of book that, in 1959, was “virtually unprecedented”: the 19th Century’s omniscient narrator, a modern “speeded-up, throwaway style”, the secrets and scandals of the Victorian novel of sensation, a touch of mystery from the Golden Age of Detection, and a crowded cast of characters, all packed into fewer pages than one would believe possible. In the process she broke the guardrails of the realist, non-realist, and modernist schools simultaneously. Finally, “she added to the mix an element of the uncanny, through which the existence of a transcendent, eternal and immaterial reality impinges on the lives of her ageing characters, reminding them of their mortality”.

That exuberance of invention may be one of the elements that make this book so engaging and enjoyable. Certainly, the perspective of our narrator helps; though never blind to realities, her buoyantly humous outlook refuses to flag. And the failure of most characters to cope with the inevitable only makes the few who accept their lot that much more attractive to us. Unsurprisingly, as Mr. Lodge wrote, “[t]hose with religious faith, specifically of the Roman Catholic persuasion, seem to cope best…”. And Nadia May performs the novel as if Spark had written it with her specific narrative talents in mind.

fun, darkly comedic portrayals

This was copyrighted in 1959, but it's all still relatable and relevant. Not for everyone, but if you like dark humor or comedies of manners, you'll love it.

Looking at London

I like to read books that feature London, even when the London is so far away it seems impossible to take in. This London features a whole.world.made up.of tiny spots you know no longer exist. Still, it is fun to look at . Or to read.

A Must

When Dame Lettie Colston receives another in a series of what appear to be crank calls—the caller always delivering the same message "Remember you must die"—she is, of course, deeply disturbed. Is the caller a madman? Is it someone close to her trying to scare her to death in hopes of coming into a large inheritance? Eventually, most of her acquaintances, including her brother Godfrey and his wife, Charmian—a once celebrated novelist well into her eighties sinking into dementia—also receive the strange calls. Far from convincing the police to take the matter seriously, the victims each claiming that the caller is a different person and that a gang must therefore be behind the hoax, has the officials thinking the whole case is a perfect example of mass hysteria.

I had read some excellent reviews about this book, which, according to some sources, might be Spark's best novel, so did come to it with some expectations and was pleasantly surprised to find that it more than deserved the praise. The biggest surprise was that Spark managed to make a book about death and dying so funny and not the least bit morbid (or hardly at all) and the group of elderly characters—the youngest of them at just over seventy—an absolutely fascinating bunch to read about. This audiobook version read by Nadia May is highly recommended.

The perfect novel?

I've read and listened to several novels by Muriel Spark in the past, and have always enjoyed them. This is the best yet, and in fact I don't know how a novel could be any better. As soon as I finished listening to it, I went back to the beginning and started again, and loved it just as much the second time, It is quite a short book but it's amazing how leisurely it feels. Scenes are described in meticulous and vivid detail. Even the most mundane interactions, viewed through Spark's eyes, are fascinating - whether funny or horrifying, or both.

Nadia May's reading is also perfect. She gives each character a distinctive and appropriate voice, and her narration is cool and insouciant, which captures the author's tone wonderfully.

Delightful

Delightful and quirky, creepy mystery, eccentric characters and lovely prose. The narrator is so pleasant to listen to.

Wonderful writer, excellent narrator

This is a wonderful production of a quirky, thoughtful book. I enjoyed the book in my twenties, but I understand it better now that I’m in my sixties. The narrator really does a lovely job bringing life to the characters and telling the story. Highly recommend!