Memento Mori: Library Edition

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Spark novel
Review: I highly recommend Memento Mori. First of all, the elderly -- and we are talking about the advanced in age, sixty-eight year olds are consider the "young" -- rarely receive fictional treatment. As a thirtysomething reader, I found Spark's take on the topic interesting and the ending (as well as the mystery of the phone calls) oh so effective.

Spark takes pains to show how the wisdom that is supposed to accrete over the years has not worked and her characters display the same vices and virtues that they have their whole lives. The ending is sudden and heartbreaking because the absence of direction the characters show never abates.

Another stronger effort by one of Britain's literary doyennes.

Rating:
Summary: Remember, you must die
Review: Loved this book. It was witty, insightful, and very well-crafted. The subject of old age is treated not only without the usual sappiness and maudlin sentimentality, but with irreverence. Though the book is entertaining, it touches upon a number of important ideas- the meaning (or lack thereof) of life, how modern society regards death, and the treatment of the elderly in today's society. Though the book was written in the mid to late 1950's, it is just as relevant today as it was when originally published.

Rating:
Summary: Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
Review: The Scottish born writer, Muriel Spark, who was born in 1918, wrote the novel Memento Mori in 1959. It is a really satirical commentary on life, coloured by her Roman Catholic faith.
The content of the book tells us the story of some rather old British upper class people who get anonymous telephone calls, in which they are reminded of their soon death. The message is, "Remember, you must die". The novel takes place in the early fifties or so. It begins with the first anonymous call, which seventy-nine year old Dame Lettie Colston gets and ends about one and a half year later, when most of the described characters have died. Within that period we discover a complex net of relations between those old people, ranging from love affairs in their youth time to blackmailing and blaming each other.
The book is indeed a very fascinating and readable story. At the beginning you get to know each character separately, but deeper in it, the whole matrix of their relations is drawn up. Mrs. Spark describes perfectly the way how the very aged people live in their past. They keep on thinking of events that had happened in their youth and for that reason the reader gets the impression that they have an enormous fear of things which will come. These are things like becoming insane and mad. Nevertheless, death is the topic, from which they are most threatened of. In my opinion you can see this behaviour in the way how they react concerning their anonymous calls. They are very upset about those happenings and it is their main goal to catch the culprit. This gives the novel a distinct tough of mystery. However, they have never found out who the caller was. The main statement of the story for the characters as well as for the reader is: "if you do not remember death, death reminds you to do so". What Mrs. Spark means is that anybody should be aware of the topic death, because it comes anyway and you can't do anything against it.
Another very important thing, ironically described in the book is the religious and conservative way of living of many Brits. The characters in the story describe themselves as very religious, but when they begin thinking of their adolescent behaviour, contrary secrets are lifted. As an example, we could use the characters of Lisa Broke, Guy Leet, Charmian and Godfrey. The last two people had been married for years, but within them she had an affair with Guy Leet. He had, by himself additionally an affair with Lisa Broke. When Lisa comes behind that secret, she wants to tell everything to Godfrey. The only way for Guy Leet to prevent a disaster was a marriage with her to calm her down.
All in all, the book is very engaging, though I think that the ending of the book is rather confusing. In my opinion Mrs. Spark could have replaced the appearance of Godfrey's son Eric and Matt O'Brien with a more detailed finish, because if you read through the last pages, you keep on waiting for a suitable showdown, which does not appear. The view informations you get deal with the character's death dates and the diseases from which they were suffering of.