Penguin no. 1546: Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

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 white of eggs.'

I found quite a few Muriel Spark novels during my Penguin-searching trip to the UK. I made sure they came back in my luggage, and then put them aside until Muriel Spark Reading Week, organised by Simon and co-hosted by Harriet (and fortunately so: all but one of the parcels of books I posted back home via Royal Mail are now quite overdue). I cannot think of an author I've yet to read which I have anticipated more. This is partly a consequence of the wonderful and intriguing Terence Greer-designed covers which grace the 1960s Penguin editions;  and partly because every blogpost I read reviewing one of her novels invariably refers to her unusual sense of humour; and partly because a randomly met stranger on the last day of my holiday made the comment that he didn't read novels by Muriel Spark because he wasn't a woman. I've been waiting two months to find out what that statement means.

It seems to me that the message of this novel is summed up in the suggestion of Henry Mortimer quoted above. His audience is a group of old people, all aged above 70, as anyone younger ' is not one of us', as Alec Warner frequently observes. But Mortimer, a retired Chief Inspector, is one of them and they seek his help in putting an end to the phone calls they have all been receiving, each with the unvarying and unwelcome message: remember you must die. Perhaps what they really seek is immunity from the message itself, something no one can give them. Mortimer attempts to give them advice, but they pay little heed; they are impatient with his philosophising. Instead they continue with their lives, entirely consumed with activities which are relatively pointless.

It is hinted again and again that the individual obsessions of these elderly individuals lack meaning or purpose. So much of what they are now is derived from what they once were, continuing their enmities though the triggering events are now forgotten, or unthinkingly clinging to long-practised patterns of behaviour. So Godfrey Colston pockets cakes at an afternoon tea when no one is watching, and splices his matches in two, all to save money despite being wealthy; and he agonises over hiding earlier infidelities from a wife who never cared and who has known about them all along. Dame Lettie Colston and the old ladies in the Maud Long Ward change their wills, only to change them again, while the forgotten poet Percy Mannering single-mindedly carries on literary feuds that no one is interested in.

And is Muriel Spark suggesting a tendency to ignore what is real and what matters, while searching for meaning where it is not to be found? She has the old bedridden ladies with their circumscribed lives reading their daily horoscopes and reinterpreting the monotony of their existence in the light of the predictions, and Dr Alec Warner not really living so much as observing and measuring, interested only in reactions, and records, and looking for patterns that may not exist. And so we have a group of old people, largely isolated, impotent and incapable and with their time limited, unable to let go of redundant patterns of behaviour and unimportant things from the past, living as though life continues.

But then the frequent phone calls are there to remind them that it doesn't. And although it never changes, the message is still a personal one, with the unidentified caller asking for each of them by name. Just like the essential truth at the heart of the message he delivers, the caller cannot be eluded: not by contacting the police, or staying elsewhere, or seeking the company of friends. This is Death personified, and all the recipient can choose is how he or she will receive the message: stoically or calmly, recognising it as an unavoidable reality, or with fear and panic, refusing to acknowledge the truth.

Despite the seriousness of her topic and perhaps perversely, the tone of the novel is light and playful, and the writing spare and economical. Her humour suggests pessimism about humanity, but it seems free of malice, and it is easy to feel considerable sympathy for the characters she creates despite their flaws. She seems to have fun with their individual stories, amusing herself with their individual fates, building in unexpected linkages, and confounding their expectations. And sometimes she has them undone by their very attempts to hide from their fate, such as Dame Lettie meeting her death through circumstances triggered by her fear of the phone calls. She has them wrong about so much, and unable to see when others are right.

The final chapter tells us what happens to each of these old people. In broad terms, of course, we already know: a gradual diminishing of vitality, and a gradual diminishing of this group of friends and rivals, but it is written there starkly emphasizing its inevitability, and that there is no escape.

Also by Muriel Spark:
Penguin no. 2157: Robinson

Links to all posts from MSRW:
Harriet Devines's Spark roundup
Stuck in a Book's review roundup