My third read for phase 1 of #ReadingMuriel2018 – I don’t suppose I can keep this pace up all year, but I am enjoying my Spark reading at the moment.
Momento Mori is a brilliantly dark, humorous novel which focuses on ageing and the inevitability of death. Muriel Spark was only forty when she published this novel – making us wonder why it was, she had such a preoccupation with death, and extreme old age. I have seen the novel described as one that explores the fear of ageing and death – I don’t think it is that – a fascination perhaps a curiosity – but I don’t feel there is fear in this novel. Despite its subject – there is nothing depressing about this novel – it is a funny, compelling read.
It all begins with something of a mystery. A group of elderly, upper class people receive anonymous phone calls. The caller says – ‘remember you must die’ – unsettling – especially when one has reached a certain age. A detective has already been called in to investigate. The first person to receive calls is Dame Lettie Colston a retired committee member, who had done extensive work in prison reform. The caller seems able to know exactly where Dame Lettie is – tracking her down to her brother Godfrey’s house – and in time turns their attention to him.
Other members of Lettie’s social circle include Godfrey’s wife Charmian, a successful novelist – whose memory is starting to go – and her former maid Jean Taylor now in a public nursing home. Lettie (nothing like as charitably minded as she likes to think herself) visits Jean telling about the caller and reminding Jean of the past, a time when she shared a lover with Charmian. Retired sociologist Alec Warner, spends most of his time meticulously recording every detail of his friends’ lives on index cards, making detailed notes on everything that happens.
Godfrey isn’t the only other person to receive calls, in the course of the novel, almost everyone receives the calls – only the voice appears different to each of them. Some people hearing an old voice, others a young voice – some hear a well-spoken, educated voice others an uneducated voice. Who could be making these calls? Could it even be death itself as Jean suggests?
Charmian for me is one of the most sympathetic characters, vulnerable and forgetful she is one of the only characters who accepts the warning dished out by the caller. Happily, immune to all the odd goings on, lost in her own world – she is not even entirely sure what year it is.
“‘Are there lots of obituaries today?’ said Charmian.
‘Oh, don’t be gruesome,’ said Lettie.
‘Would you like me to read you the obituaries, dear?’ Godfrey said, turning the pages to find the place in defiance of his sister.
‘Well, I should like the war news,’ Charmian said.
‘The war has been over since nineteen forty-five,’ Dame Lettie said. ‘If indeed it is the last war you are referring to. Perhaps, however, you mean the First World War? The Crimean perhaps…?’
‘Lettie, please,’ said Godfrey. He noticed that Lettie’s hand was unsteady as she raised her cup, and the twitch on her large left cheek was pronounced. He thought in how much better form he himself was than his sister, though she was the younger, only seventy-nine.”
When Henry Mortimer retired police inspector, who has been consulted about the nuisance caller, finally receives his own phone call – the voice is that of a woman. A character we meet later in the novel – the manipulative Mrs Pettigrew receives a call too – but she refuses to acknowledge it even to herself.
“Mrs. Pettigrew, though she had in fact, one quiet afternoon, received the anonymous telephone call, had chosen to forget it. She possessed a strong faculty for simply refusing to admit an unpleasant situation, and to go quite blank where it was concerned.”
In this novel Muriel Spark uses a third person, omniscient narrator, though the viewpoint changes continually, allowing us to see into the minds of all her characters.
Another plot strand involves the estate of a mutual friend of all the above; Lisa Brooke. Her death early in the novel results in disputes over her will. Secrets are revealed including a secret husband and an old affair. Lisa Brooke’s former housekeeper, Mrs Pettigrew is named in the will, but her claim is usurped by the secret husband and so Mrs Pettigrew looks around for new employment. Her avaricious gaze falls on Godfrey. Mrs Pettigrew is a manipulative, grasping woman, once she gets herself comfortably settled in Godfrey’s house – she sets about trying to get rid of Charmian and begins blackmailing Godfrey over his past indiscretions. Mabel Pettigrew is a nasty bullying figure; the kind of character Spark writes so well.
In time the wonderful Charmian begins to rally herself – and as she starts to improve, as her mind begins to sharpen, Godfrey under the tender ministrations of the awful Mrs Pettigrew, starts to deteriorate.
“She looked at Godfrey who was wolfing his rice pudding without, she was sure, noticing what he was eating, and she wondered what was on his mind. She wondered what new torment Mrs Pettigrew was practising upon him. She wondered how much of his past life Mrs Pettigrew had discovered, and why he felt it necessary to hush it up at all such costs. She wondered where her own duty to Godfrey lay – where does one’s duty as a wife reach its limits? She longed to be away in the nursing home in Surrey, and was surprised at this longing of hers, since all her life she had suffered from apprehensions of being in the power of strangers, and Godfrey had always seemed better than the devil she did not know.”
I can see why this novel is so well thought of by people who know Spark’s work better than I do yet. The dialogue alone is first class – as is the portrait of the council run nursing home, where the nurses call all the old ladies ‘grannies.’ Muriel Spark makes her characters face up to their past misdemeanours, as they all move toward their final destinies.
This sounds a million miles more enjoyable than my last encounter with a Spark novel……Will definitely add this to my reading list
I would love to know what you would think of this one. It’s less confusing than The Comforters. I would hope you would enjoy this one a lot more.
I shall put it on my list though to be honest I can’t see me getting to it for months
It will be worth reading whenever you get the chance.
I didn’t enjoy this one much, partly because I didn’t like any of the characters.
That’s a shame. I tend to not mind unlikeable characters, often enjoying their horridness. Though in this novel I did develop a soft spot for Charmian and Jean Taylor.
This was the first non-Brodie Spark I read and I loved it, though it took me a little by surprise as I didn’t expect it to be as sharp and strange as it is. Wonderfully written, too – and very dark! 🙂
Very sharp, and humourously dark. It was so very well written.
I’ve just finished The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and loved it, so I’m keen to read more of her now. This sounds great… I shall put it to the top of the list!
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was my first Spark novel a few years ago.
I think this is one of her best. I loved it, too.
So glad that you enjoyed Memento Mori, I know lots of other people view it as among her best.
This sounds brilliant. Spark at her dark, weird best is always a winner for me. I’ll put a library request in!
It’s excellent, I hope you manage to get hold of a copy.
Sounds like an excellent read and you’re doing so well with your project!
Yes very good, thank you it is great so many people are joining in and I shall be reading another soon.
Well, I’ll be adding this to my TBR list!
Ooh excellent, I’m glad. Hope you enjoy it.
Just finished reading this. I made the ‘deadline’ (excuse pun) on the last day of February.
This is my favourite of the 3 earliest novels. But I loved them all.
Don’t think I ever enjoyed a novel where there isn’t a single pleasant character (except possibly Miss Taylor and Mrs. Anthony) as much as I did this one.It was brilliant and it was wicked.
It was very wicked, so sharply observed. I loved Miss Taylor but had a soft spot for Charmian.
[…] Memento Mori by Muriel Spark was my third read for #ReadingMuriel2018 and I loved it. It all begins with something of a mystery. A group of elderly, upper class people receive anonymous phone calls. The caller says – ‘remember you must die’ – unsettling – especially when one has reached a certain age. Not all these characters are that likeable, but they are so compellingly written about that, that doesn’t matter. […]