Memento Mori

By: Muriel Spark

Narrated by: 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

Critic reviews

"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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!