Memento Mori by Muriel Spark (1959)

A group of senior citizens, old friends, relatives, lovers, acquaintances, individually endure the coming of age as they are tormented by a anonymous caller.

Book Review: Memento Mori once again demonstrates that Scottish author Muriel Spark is many writers, all with the same name. No two of her books are alike, she has no template, there is no stereotypical Spark novel. Each time she blooms anew. Her great skill is working the interactions of a group of people, each member of the group playing an essential part, like a short play in novel form. She can juggle a dozen or more characters, keeping them all in the air and at the front of the reader's consciousness at the same time. But these characters are not relatable, likable, or even nice. Spark's books are not cozy, warm, comfy, sweet. If you want that grab a blanket, hot water bottle, box of Cadbury's, and an old chair by the fire. Her books are economical, creative, brilliantly written and structured, masterpieces. "Astringent" is a word I see sometimes. They can be an acquired taste, but for the right reader they are addictive and irresistible. Yes, that right reader is me. A memento mori is a warning or reminder of death (in Latin: remember you must die, or remember death), related to the practice of meditating on mortality and reflecting on the vanity and transient nature of life on earth. Which is what Memento Mori is, a meditation on death, provided through the lives, loves, hates, actions, memories, thoughts of a number of septuagenarians ("Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield"). All leavened with her needle pointed and razor sharp humor. Although still young when she wrote it, Spark captures aging perfectly, providing readers with their own memento mori. In the story a caller repeatedly says: "Remember you must die." A character observes a number of hospital patients with dementia and finds that they are her memento mori. Yet in all this contemplation of death, Spark is in perfect control, and not above a little trickery of her own, as a character, herself a novelist, notes: "The art of fiction is very like the practise of deception." Spark's novels may not be as soft and purring as a kitty, but they are very much like life. Spark's reflections on death are not shallow or simple, and neither is this book. [4½★]