Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

Overview

Poignant, hilarious, and spooky, Memento Mori addresses old age

In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone reminds each: Remember you must die. Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled, and many an old unsavory secret is dusted off.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811223041
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	05/27/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	371,650
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Muriel Spark (1918–2006) was the author of dozens of novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Memento Mori, A Far Cry from Kensington, The Girls of Slender Means, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, The Driver’s Seat, and many more. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.

Table of Contents

There is a Waugh—like brilliance to Memento Mori, in the easy economical narrative, the continuous convention producing a series of surprises, the well—cut dialogue, the controlled tone. This last is the most remarkable of Miss Spark's achievements. Nothing is forced, least of all the humor.

What People are Saying About This

Tennessee Williams

A marvelously witty English writer—her best, I think, is Memento Mori, which is chillingly brilliant.

Editorial Reviews

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

Michael Schaffer

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 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

Scotland has created just three great novelists his names still resound around the globe. The first was Walter Scott…the original best seller. His heir was Robert Louis Stevenson…Then came Muriel Spark, whose wit and wisdom sparkle like a Cartier diamond…
—Alan Taylor, Scotland—on—Sunday

Alan Taylor

She had been a starving editor and writer 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.'
—Stephen Schiff, The New Yorker

Stephen Schiff