Books › Memento Mori
Memento Mori
First published 1998 · 2220 pages
A wickedly funny, unsentimental dance of death among London's elderly elite, where petty grudges clash with the ultimate equalizer.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like attending a very proper, slightly claustrophobic tea party where someone has spiked the Earl Grey with arsenic. It moves at a brisk, ruthless clip, propelled by razor-sharp dialogue and an utterly unsentimental view of human nature. The atmosphere is steeped in a macabre, chillingly polite absurdity, as a cast of elderly characters clings desperately to their petty grudges, vanities, and social climbing while the shadow of mortality looms ever closer. The prose is economical and devastatingly precise, delivering dark comedy with a perfectly straight face. It will delight readers who crave biting British satire and those who appreciate a narrative that treats the indignities of aging and the inevitability of death with wry, unflinching brilliance.
- Mood
- macabre
- absurd
- chillingly polite
- claustrophobic
- Tone
- wry
- unsentimental
- darkly comic
- satirical
- detached
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the indignities of aging · mortality and denial · petty grudges · the absurdity of human vanity
- The writing
- Razor-sharp, economical, and ruthlessly precise, delivering devastatingly dry wit with absolute economy.
- The arc
- The narrative begins with amused detachment at the petty squabbles of the elderly before tightening into a chilling, inevitable confrontation with mortality.
- Who it's for
- Readers who delight in dark, unsentimental British humor and sharp social satire that refuses to look away from the grim realities of aging.
Content notes
- death and dying
- aging and dementia
- elder abuse
- blackmail
About the book
Dame Lettie Colston, seventy-nine, O.B.E. and pioneer penal reformer, has much in common with the elderly residents of the Maud Long Medical Ward. All are united by scorn, resentment, boredom--and the maudlin humour that masks the awareness of impending death.
Then the insidious telephone calls begin. 'Remember, you must die,' intones the grave, anonymous voice.
As the suspicious recipients set out to unravel the macabre mystery and catch the culprit before the culprit catches them, the intrigues, duplicities and tragedies of their lives--past and present--come to light in Muriel Spark's immortally funny parable of life and death
Description from Open Library.
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