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Review
There is a Waugh-like brilliance to this novel, in the easy economical narrative, the continuous invention producing a series of surprises, the well-cut dialogue, the controlled tone. This last is the most remarkable of Miss Spark's achievements. Nothing is forced, least of all the humour (V. S. Naipaul, NEW STATESMAN )
I am reading a trio of novels by Muriel Spark, a marvelously witty English writer, one of the few lady writers I like to read. Her best, I think, is Memento Mori, which is chillingly brilliant (Tennessee Williams )
This funny and macabre book has delighted me as much as any novel that I have read since the war (Graham Greene )
A brilliant and singularly gruesome achchievement (Evelyn Waugh )
I am reading a trio of novels by Muriel Spark, a marvelously witty English writer, one of the few lady writers I like to read. Her best, I think, is Memento Mori, which is chillingly brilliant (Tennessee Williams )
This funny and macabre book has delighted me as much as any novel that I have read since the war (Graham Greene )
A brilliant and singularly gruesome achchievement (Evelyn Waugh )
Book Description
A brilliant, daring and darkly funny novel by Muriel Spark, 'mistress of the highest high comedy' (The Times)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Muriel Spark reminds us that we all must die. Read this book and you will not forget this, unlike her septugenarian and octogenarian characters. Because of their selective amnesia a malicious caller interupts their respectful and often laughable lives.
'Remember, you must die,' says the voice, which, understandably, upsets people. Meetings are held and retired detectives reinstated. Old relationships and sordid pasts are gradually and carefully revealed creating a tension with the character's own present and the false identity they cling on to with wrinkled fingers. There is also a more touching tension that of their inevitable and certain future. Those characters who are comfortable with the caller and his message are branded senile, suggesting a feeling of contempt that Spark has for her main characters and their secretive and silly lives.
This is a cleverly constructed novel. It is dark but often light too. There is a delightful sense of irony, and the investigations that attempt to discover the caller's identity give the novel a distinct touch of the Agatha Christie mystery. Muriel Spark is on of Scotland's best writers. This is a very good and funy book.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have read Momento Mori twice. The first time was in the sixties (my late twenties) the second recently (I'm approaching eighty - rapidly. Age has taught me a lot and I can now appreciate MM a great deal more than I once did. All book-lovers should read it. It is a remarkable work of very considerable merit. Muriel Spark is a fine writer. In MM she does not suffer the lazy reader - be alert. The main characters - quite a few - hear the imperative and experience the inevitable. Plot and sub-plot hold the reader and the carefull ones will grasp connections missed by inattention. If you are a stranger to Muriel Spark catch up on what you have missed. Good Reading. Lionel
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
All the characters in Muriel Spark's novel are old people. There is Dame Lettie Colson who is pestered - but perhaps it is an illusion - by anonymous telephone calls with a voice saying only "Remember you must die", her brother Godfrey and his wife Charmian who live in a sort of ménage à trois. Their life doesn't get easier as they advance in age: senility and physical decrepitude are handicaps they try to live with, sometimes conscious of them but not always.
Then there are the twelve female occupants of the Maud Long Medical Ward, a nursing home, who spend their time gossiping about petty scandals, mostly about wills being rewritten in the favour of another person for some trivial behavioural reason.
The plot is both funny and macabre because all the characters are mean, jealous, curious, witty or confused, probably as they used to be all their life. It seems that old age does not transform our character much, for better or for worse.
Then there are the twelve female occupants of the Maud Long Medical Ward, a nursing home, who spend their time gossiping about petty scandals, mostly about wills being rewritten in the favour of another person for some trivial behavioural reason.
The plot is both funny and macabre because all the characters are mean, jealous, curious, witty or confused, probably as they used to be all their life. It seems that old age does not transform our character much, for better or for worse.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
not quite as good as I had hoped
I approached this book with high expectations, perhaps too high. However although not quite accepting the comparison with Evelyn Waugh I still enjoyed it very much. Read more
Published 6 months ago by F. Geering
Mistress mine
Ms. Spark is a masterful writer. This is a wake-up call for ageing baby boomers everywhere. We are now old. Get used to it!
Published 12 months ago by susan ann crawford
clichés worked brilliantly
Spark has probably assembled together every cliché about being old here, along with most ways of dying. Read more
Published 12 months ago by E. Clarke
the best years
a very amusing book, but also realistic in Spark's insight into our later years.
Published on 3 Mar 2010 by Mrs. E. R. Fionda
Hasn't Aged Well
This well-regarded meditation on life and death is one of those books I would have been unlikely to ever get around to had it not been selected by my book group. Read more
Published on 1 July 2007 by A. Ross
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