Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Muriel Spark is a master of the compact, taut novel that bites in many directions, and this is the work of hers that I have read most often. I did not realize how much I loved it until I read it the second time, which is not to say I was indifferent to it on the first reading. I was simply inside it and absorbing it through the skin, or so it felt. The story would be simple were it not for the twist, the element of the strange caller who selects a group of people to telephone from time to time, to remind them all that they must die. Not that they will die but that they must, that death is their duty. In Spark’s vision the caller is more mischief than malice, but the malice is presents by fits and starts, as one secret after another comes to light. The cast of characters is a bit like the roster of any good British detective story, and there is a sense that a mystery is afoot, but this is sleight of hand on the part of the writer; she is more interested in the pungent comedy of these older folks who are stirred into such energy by the prank. It is tempting to say that this book is like Sparks’s other work in many ways and it is stylistically similar, mordant, and full of the needles of satire that she loves well. But I don’t find her novels to be very similar to each other, except that the cumulative effect of reading several of them is that a figure appears in the background, a quiet, sharp observer who is watching them all and smiling, just so, behind her hand. That quiet, scrupulous author is worth reading and her import exceeds the page length in every book. She is one of the masters of the short novel, which is the form of novel I love most.