Memento Mori

Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read, Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark. In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs each, "Remember you must die." Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more. From Library Journal Spark spikes the Geritol of a group of London senior citizens, who begin receiving anonymous phone calls reminding them that death is coming. These seemingly sweet old people, evidently, have some fairly dark pasts. Add in a dash of blackmail and a pinch of adultery, and you have some good, not-so-clean fun. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From She had been a starving writer and editor in the classic style when success bonked her on the head in the late fifties...with Memento Mori , a complex, beautiful, and terrifyingly insightful novel about old age, which Graham Greene claimed 'has delighted me as much as any novel that I have read since the war.' [Her oeuvre] now makes up one of the most trenchant and accomplished bodies of literary work since the Second World War. Gerontology,Psychological fiction,Social Science,London (England),Practical jokes,Fiction,Literary,Older people,General,Didactic fiction Dame Lettie Colston is the first of her circle to receive these anonymous calls, and she does not wish to be reminded. Nor do her friends and family - though they are constantly looking out for signs of decline in others, and change their wills on a weekly basis. As the caller's activities become more widespread, soon a witch-hunt is in full cry, exposing past and present duplicities, self-deception, and blackmail. Nobody is above suspicion. Only a few, blessed with a sense of humour and the gift of faith, can guess at the caller's identity.

Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read, Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark.

Philadelphia Inquirer - Michael Schaffer

[A]cidly funny tale of aging and death...a marvelously crafted, tautly written novel...

**Unforgettably astounding and a joy to read, __Memento Mori__ is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark.**__Remember you must die.____Memento Mori__ Each of a group of elderly friends receives a phone call with the message, "Remember you must die." This brings many old secrets to light, including blackmail and adultery