A review by commander_blop
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

An unusual book -- all the main characters are in their 70s or 80s and most of them receive an unusual (for its truthfulness) prank phone call: "Remember you must die." The set-up sounds like it has the makings of a murder mystery but it is nothing of the kind. Instead, it is a closely observed comedy of manners and a pretty funny one at that. I enjoyed this a lot, which is saying something since I started it directly after Jane Bowles' Two Serious Ladies and most books would have suffered by comparison. I especially enjoyed the character of Alec Warner, a retired sociologist who keeps a carefully cross-referenced library of notecards on the actions and reactions of the elderly friends in his circle. He goes so far as to try to get people to take their own temperature before, during, and after discussions that he knows will be unpleasant.

Some favorite moments:

"it's difficult," said Miss Taylor, "for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young."

* * *

"Her face puckered in folds under the desk-lamp. Two thoughts intruded simultaneously. One was: I am really very tired; and the other: I am not a bit tired, I am charging ahead with great energy. She lifted the pen again and continued to put the wavering marks across the page."

* * *

"She always *was* a bitch," said Godfrey, as if her death were the ultimate proof of it.

* * *

Henry Mortimer said: 'If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.'