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Rating: 
Summary: Something eerie is happening to a group of elderly friends.
Review: And the message is that they must remember that each of them is going to die. Their responses to this are interesting. Fear. Denial. Acceptance. Strange, and yet moving. And what would our response be if someone called and told us, "Remember you must die"?
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: 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: An Acute, Funny and Humane Look at Old Age and Death
Review: Memento Mori--"Remember you must die"--is the persistent message that intrudes itself into the characters here, a collection of very elderly Englishmen and women of the mid-1950's. Don't be put off by the message, although most of the characters are. This is not a gruesome book. It is a humane, gently hilarious and deadly accurate depiction of what happens to people as they reach and live in old age. The message is a foil for the author's revelation of the individual natures of her characters. I was amazed that I laughed out loud at several points, so acute are Ms. Spark's observations. If you have known very old people or are one yourself, at least one who has a sense of humor and irony, you can appreciate the universality of these people and their attitudes. The individual characters are bound to their own times and situations, youth in the high Victorian Empire and the years thereafter into the twilight of the post war traumas of diminished England. But I am certain that wherever you are, if you have known old people, and observed them interacting with each other, you will recognize Spark's cast of characters and their adventures. The loves and hates, successes and failures that marked their youth are all carried forward and nursed. People bide their time to avenge, in mundane and petty ways, the petty slights and bullying of their spouses and friends accumulated over a lifetime. It all comes together memorably in a very readable way.
Rating:
Summary: The Four Last Things
Review: Muriel Spark is, as always, deliciously sharp, witty, entertaining, and terrifying. Here a mysterious voice (God? Death? the author?) admonishes a set of alternately charming and despicable souls: "Remember, you must die." Spark is a better novelist than Evelyn Waugh because, while Waugh is often more riotously funny than the ever-subtle Spark, Waugh focuses more on the foibles of the moment--some of his characters will be (though still entertaining) "dated" by the middle of the next century, one suspects. Spark, however, through her tiny intrustions into fictional reality (the voices here, the typewriter in THE COMFORTERS, etc.) enlarges her scope--so long as people die and don't want to think about that fact, MOMENTO MORI will be on target. It is curious that it is the women--Flannery O'Connor and Muriel Spark--who are strong enough to emphasize in the theology of their fiction the "terrible swiftness of mercy," the sheer audacity of the Holy Spirit, as it were. Spark is not only one of the best novelists of our century--she is very likely the most economical. MOMENTO MORI is one of her best. Spark says more in a little over 200 pages than many novelists manage to say in a lifetime of long novels.
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.
Rating:
Summary: Accomplished, but left me cold
Review: This novel dramatizes the crisis that develops among a circle of elderly, (mostly) wealthy literati when they beginning receiving spooky, anonymous phone calls which inform them, "Remember you must die." Muriel Spark is an extremely accomplished writer, and "Memento Mori" shows off a formidable degree of literary skill. It is spare, well-constructed, and elegantly written. But in the end this novel left me cold. It's pervaded by a spirit of misanthropy which, I think, is not objectionable per se but takes a comic genius on the order of a Swift or a Nabokov if it is truly to succeed. Perhaps it's more a matter of taste than anything else. I recognize and admire Spark's considerable talent, but this novel simply did not appeal to me.
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