Memento Mori
by Muriel Spark
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Elderly Lettie Colston receives an anonymous phone call reminding her that she must die. Soon ten of Lettie's friends also get the call. A bizarre investigation reveals a network of deception that binds together the group of aging eccentrics.Tags
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In a typically contrary move, Spark chose to write her definitive novel about old age when she was barely forty, thus leaving herself free to write about teenagers when she was in her eighties...
Most of the characters in this book are at least twice the author's age, but you wouldn't think it: this is a book that seems to convey what it's like to be very old just as powerfully and convincingly as Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, Old Filth, or The dark flood rises. The characters see themselves as engaged in a constant struggle: How primitive, Guy thought, life becomes in old age, when one may be surrounded by familiar comforts and yet more vulnerable to the action of nature than any young explorer at the Pole. And how simply the physical show more laws assert themselves, frustrating all one's purposes. And there are still the effects of deceptions and love affairs from before the First World War working themselves out between the characters, there are relatives and hangers-on (many of them no longer young themselves) angling for legacies, there are the usual small catastrophes of everyday life, which have so much more impact than they used to, there is the threat of ending up in a Home or — far worse — in the Maud Long Ward(*) at the hospital, with no recourse other than the largely-empty threat to change your will. And to cap it all there is a mysterious voice on the telephone saying "Remember you must die".
Not much fun, clearly, but still surprisingly funny. show less
Most of the characters in this book are at least twice the author's age, but you wouldn't think it: this is a book that seems to convey what it's like to be very old just as powerfully and convincingly as Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, Old Filth, or The dark flood rises. The characters see themselves as engaged in a constant struggle: How primitive, Guy thought, life becomes in old age, when one may be surrounded by familiar comforts and yet more vulnerable to the action of nature than any young explorer at the Pole. And how simply the physical show more laws assert themselves, frustrating all one's purposes. And there are still the effects of deceptions and love affairs from before the First World War working themselves out between the characters, there are relatives and hangers-on (many of them no longer young themselves) angling for legacies, there are the usual small catastrophes of everyday life, which have so much more impact than they used to, there is the threat of ending up in a Home or — far worse — in the Maud Long Ward(*) at the hospital, with no recourse other than the largely-empty threat to change your will. And to cap it all there is a mysterious voice on the telephone saying "Remember you must die".
Not much fun, clearly, but still surprisingly funny. show less
A group of septuagenarians in late-1950s Britain are receiving upsetting phone calls: a man keeps harassing them, simply stating, "Remember, you must die." In Spark's hands, what would be a vehicle or device for a crime/thriller in the hands of someone like Agatha Christie instead becomes a tour de force of social commentary.
Like Christie, Spark uses social banter to explore and criticize social issues; in Memento Mori, Spark brings postbellum anxieties about class, gender, and death to bear on relationships between individuals. Unlike Christie, Spark is not concerned with placing the mystery at the center of her novel. Instead, Spark creates an often laugh-out-loud funny—and often bewilderingly and staggeringly cruel—portrait of a show more close-knit group of people who are actually not all that close-knit at all.
Spark's scope here is phenomenal, as is her mixture of farce, politics, and drawing-room comedy of manners. One is often reminded of writers like James and Elizabeth Bowen when reading Spark: her razor-sharp wit, her combination of high-brow and low-brow comedy, and her ability to expose idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies in social interactions are what make Memento Mori work so well as an attack on a very real fear: the fear of death after having lived through the death of the world, twice over. show less
Like Christie, Spark uses social banter to explore and criticize social issues; in Memento Mori, Spark brings postbellum anxieties about class, gender, and death to bear on relationships between individuals. Unlike Christie, Spark is not concerned with placing the mystery at the center of her novel. Instead, Spark creates an often laugh-out-loud funny—and often bewilderingly and staggeringly cruel—portrait of a show more close-knit group of people who are actually not all that close-knit at all.
Spark's scope here is phenomenal, as is her mixture of farce, politics, and drawing-room comedy of manners. One is often reminded of writers like James and Elizabeth Bowen when reading Spark: her razor-sharp wit, her combination of high-brow and low-brow comedy, and her ability to expose idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies in social interactions are what make Memento Mori work so well as an attack on a very real fear: the fear of death after having lived through the death of the world, twice over. show less
This is not a mystery novel, although it does center around anonymous phone calls made to seniors, with the stark message, "Remember, you must die."
Filled with a dizzying number of septuagenarians and octogenarians who cope with ailments, arguments, old love affairs, and with wills -- both the threatening and the actual rewriting of them -- it is remarkably entertaining throughout.
Spark was just 41 when this novel came out. She showed uncanny insight toward her aged characters as they headed toward death. But death, even for those so closely approaching it, remains an abstraction for them in spite of the advice of the phone caller to "remember." As one of the more philosophical characters, Taylor, says this near the end of the show more novel,
"We all appear to ourselves frustrated in our old age, Alec, because we cling to everything so much. But in reality we are still fulfilling our lives."
Even as a mere sexagenarian, I love that line. A wonderful, funny, thought-provoking novel. It may become one of my all-time favorites. show less
Filled with a dizzying number of septuagenarians and octogenarians who cope with ailments, arguments, old love affairs, and with wills -- both the threatening and the actual rewriting of them -- it is remarkably entertaining throughout.
Spark was just 41 when this novel came out. She showed uncanny insight toward her aged characters as they headed toward death. But death, even for those so closely approaching it, remains an abstraction for them in spite of the advice of the phone caller to "remember." As one of the more philosophical characters, Taylor, says this near the end of the show more novel,
"We all appear to ourselves frustrated in our old age, Alec, because we cling to everything so much. But in reality we are still fulfilling our lives."
Even as a mere sexagenarian, I love that line. A wonderful, funny, thought-provoking novel. It may become one of my all-time favorites. show less
This is brutal and funny. It does not pull its punches about the indignities of the aging process, and the horror of passing into irrelevance. The characters are all marvellously dreadful and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
"Remember you must die" is a translation of memento mori and is the phrase that a group of elderly people is hearing from an anonymous phone caller. They respond to this is different ways, but they are all at the time of life where "remember you must die" is truly around the corner.
The characters in this book are in their 80s and 90s. As such, they've had plenty of time, decades!, to misbehave, fight, and fall in love. Muriel Spark explores their interactions with humor and realism. There is a certain amount of looking back, but they are still actively living their lives regardless of their state of health, something I appreciated.
In this book, Spark didn't surprise me quite as much as she usually does. It's a good book, but not my show more favorite of hers. show less
The characters in this book are in their 80s and 90s. As such, they've had plenty of time, decades!, to misbehave, fight, and fall in love. Muriel Spark explores their interactions with humor and realism. There is a certain amount of looking back, but they are still actively living their lives regardless of their state of health, something I appreciated.
In this book, Spark didn't surprise me quite as much as she usually does. It's a good book, but not my show more favorite of hers. show less
Remember, you must die. And you must pay your taxes. There are penalties if you forget the second, but the first? Most of us don't spend much time thinking about it and neither do Muriel Sparks characters, most of whom are older than we are, and, at any rate, die at the end of the book.
People who are under the impression that they live rational lives think they are getting closer to reality if they watch the meat the will have for dinner be slaughtered and butchered and if they remember they're not immortal, but I would suggest the real truth they evade is the knowledge that the lives they lead are not rational at all. Instead, what pulls them along is a good narrative and the one in this book suffices.
People who are under the impression that they live rational lives think they are getting closer to reality if they watch the meat the will have for dinner be slaughtered and butchered and if they remember they're not immortal, but I would suggest the real truth they evade is the knowledge that the lives they lead are not rational at all. Instead, what pulls them along is a good narrative and the one in this book suffices.
Muriel Spark is so funny...not funny ha-ha, but dryly clever. This might be my favorite of hers so far. It's a little different in relationship to her other novels and some might feel this is a bit cold but I can't think of another book I have read which is entirely populated by the aged. Once you get on its wavelength, the reading becomes very amusing. Spark has such an elegant way in her narration.
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Author Information
101+ Works 22,684 Members
Muriel Spark has been called "our most chillingly comic writer since Evelyn Waugh" by the London Spectator, and the New Yorker praised her novel Memento Mori ri (1959) as "flawless." Her fiction is marked by its remarkable diversity, wit, and craftsmanship. "She happens to be, by some rare concatenation of grace and talent, an artist, a show more serious---and most accomplished---writer, a moralist engaged with the human predicament, wildly entertaining, and a joy to read" (SRSR). She became widely known in the United States when the New Yorker devoted almost an entire issue to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). Set in Edinburgh in the 1930s, this is the story of a schoolteacher, her unorthodox approach to life, and its effect on her select group of adolescent girls. Though their idol turns out to have feet of clay, she leaves an indelible mark on their lives. The Girls of Slender Means (1963), also warmly praised, is a sardonic look at the vivacity of youth and the anxieties of young womanhood. Reviewing The Mandelbaum Gate (1965) for the New Republic, Honor Tracy wrote: "There is an abundance here of invention, humor, poetry, wit, perception, that all but takes the breath away. . . . The story, in fact, is pure adventure, with the suspense as artfully maintained as anywhere by Graham Greene, but this is only one ingredient. There are memorable descriptions of the Holy Land, fascinating insights into the jumble of intrigue and piety surrounding the Holy Places, and penetrating studies of Arabs. . . . In each of [Spark's] novels heretofore one of her qualities has tended to predominate over the others. Here for the first time they are all impressively marshaled side by side, resulting in her best work so far." The daughter of an Englishwoman and a Scottish-Jewish father, Spark was born and educated in Edinburgh. After her marriage in 1938, she lived for some years in Central Africa, a period rarely reflected in her work. During World War II, she returned to Britain, where she worked in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office after the breakup of her marriage. She has been a magazine editor and written poetry and literary criticism. Spark has lived in London's Camberwell section, the setting of The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), but now makes her home in New York. Her novels reflect her conversion to Roman Catholicism. (Bowker Author Biography) Writer Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh on February 1, 1918. In 1934-1935 she took a course in commercial correspondence and précis writing at Heriot-Watt College. After her marriage in 1937, she lived for some years in Central Africa. During World War II, she returned to Britain, where she worked in the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office after the breakup of her marriage. After the war, she began her literary career. She became General Secretary of the Poetry Society, worked as an editor and wrote studies of Mary Shelley, John Masefield and the Brontë sisters. Her first book of poetry, The Fanfarlo and Other Verse, was published in 1952 and her first novel, The Comforters, was published in 1957. She wrote over twenty books including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Finishing School. She won numerous awards and honors including the 1965 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Mandelbaum Gate, the 1992 U. S. Ingersoll Foundation T. S. Eliot Award, the 1997 David Cohen British Literature Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and in 1993 she became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her services to literature. The Scottish Arts Council created the Muriel Spark International Fellowship in 2004. She died on April 13, 2006. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Memento Mori
- Original title
- Memento Mori
- Original publication date
- 1959
- People/Characters
- Dame Lettie Colston; Godfery Colston; Mabel Pettigrew; Charmian Piper Colston; Inspector Mortimer; Jean Taylor (show all 20); Guy Leete; Alec Warner; Lisa Brooke; Eric Colson; Granny Barnacle; Granny Duncan; Granny Taylor; Granny Green; Granny Valvona; Tempest Sidebottome; Ronald Sidebottome; Percy Mannering; Olive Mannering; Mrs. Anthony
- Important places
- London, England, UK (elders' home)
- Related movies
- Memento Mori (1992 | IMDb)
- Epigraph
- What shall I do with this absurdity -
O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
W. B. YEATS, The Tower
O what Venerable and Reverend ... (show all)Creatures
did the Aged seem! Immortal Cherubims!
THOMAS TRAHERNE, Centuries of Meditation
Q. What are the four last things to be ever remembered?
A. The four last things to be ever remembered are Death, Judgement, Hell, and Heaven.
The Penny Catechism - Dedication
- For
TERESA WALSHE
with love - First words
- Dame Lettie Colston refilled her fountain-pen and continued her letter: One of these days I hope you will write as brilliantly on a happier theme.
The world according to Muriel Spark is a startling place, constructed with intelligence, relish and extraordinary precision. (Introduction) - Quotations
- Remember you must die.
(Spoiler Alert) Lisa Brooke died in her seventy-third year after her second stroke. She had taken nine months to die, and in fact it was only a year before her death that, feeling rather ill, she had decided to reform her lif... (show all)e, and reminding herself how attractive she still was, offered up the new idea, her celibacy, to the Lord to whom no gift whatsoever is unacceptable. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Jean Taylor lingered for a time, employing her pain to magnify the Lord, and meditating sometimes confidingly upon Death, the first of the four last things to be ever remembered.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Memento Mori shows perhaps the world's greatest crime, the avoidable wrong, the human fault, the death of mercy. (Introduction) - Blurbers
- Greene, Graham; Waugh, Evelyn
- Original language
- English
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