Mrs Anthony knew instinctively that Mrs Pettigrew was a kindly woman. Her instinct was wrong. [p.53]
Memento Mori examines the lives of a circle of friends and acquaintances, all over seventy: Dame Lettie Colston, OBE, a former leading light of prison reform; her brother Godfrey; Godfrey's wife Charmian, once a successful novelist but now suffering dementia; Charmian's former maid Jean Taylor, just one of the 'Grannies' in a geriatric ward; Alec Warner, a retired sociologist who is attempting to document the relationships of his friends; and Mrs Pettigrew, former housekeeper to the recently-deceased Lisa Brooke, with whom Godfrey once had an affair.
The title refers to the anonymous caller who telephones each of the major characters with a calm, respectful message: 'remember, you must die'. The characters hear the caller's voice differently (young or old? male or female? with an accent?) and react in a way that reflects their nature. And at least one character chooses to simply forget that they received the call at all.
Memento Mori is told by an omniscient narrator whose interjections provide a great deal of the comedy and lay bare the deceptions and forgetfulness of the characters. It could have been a very depressing read, but in fact it's remarkably cheerful. Yes, there is grief and loss and sickness; yes, some people are nicer than others; yes, death comes at random, to everyone. It's interesting to see how the characters react to changing circumstances, to their own memories of the past, and to the approaching certainty of death. (I think on the whole I'd rather be Jean Taylor, whose calm acceptance has a spiritual aspect, than most of the others.) Spark's dry wit and cynical detachment don't detract from the emotional impact of the story. It's compassionate but never sentimental.
Read for the 'Protagonist over 50' rubric of the Reading Women Challenge 2021. There are multiple protagonists but they're all well over fifty and most of them are women.
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