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Episode 18: "Memento Mori" by Muriel Spark
110 Plays1 year ago
This week we discuss Memento Mori, Spark’s third novel and, as we’ve come to expect, it’s a really fun ride. This go-round she brings us into the lives of septuagenarians and octogenarians as they fume, backbite, explore their sexual proclivities, and all come to terms (or not) with their impending deaths. And, of course, it’s very, very funny.
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Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by Traffic
Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Lost in Redonda'
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Tom Flynn. And I'm Lori Feathers. And welcome to Lost in Redonda. Hi, Lori. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Tom. And you? Doing pretty well.
Overview of 'Memento Mori' by Miro Spark
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm really excited to dig into this week's book, the third novel from Miro Spark, Memento Mori.
00:00:32
Speaker
I don't even know where to start with this one. Every one of her novels so far has almost reset what I think is
00:00:43
Speaker
is her best work and what she can accomplish. I'm starting to think that she can pretty much do any novel that she could possibly have thought of. And well, considering that there are 20 of them to get through, she may well have done every single possible novel. Any initial thoughts on the Memento Mori?
00:01:02
Speaker
I just thought reading this was damn fun. I think that she does something that I haven't encountered very often. She creates this entire novel around a cast of octogenarians, people in their 70s, 80s,
00:01:23
Speaker
And wow, what a vibrant life these people live. I mean, there's some things that happen to them that feel like it's out of their control, out of their hands, but they're spunky. They have this entire kind of soap operaish, melodramatic, younger life with
00:01:49
Speaker
affairs amongst one another and blackmailing so that the affairs don't become known and I don't know if you do this Tom but I kind of when I read a book that has a lot of characters I kind of try to like plot out like a chart of the characters and my chart for this is just crazy showing like
00:02:10
Speaker
familial relationships and marriages, but then the lines just go every which way because this person had an affair with that person and then later got married to this person and everything is just a big scramble. I just had a lot of fun with it.
Social Web and Relationships in 'Memento Mori'
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's this really incredible social web that spark weaves and it's one like, like you said, that stretches over me more than a half century in some ways. And as the novel progresses and as characters reminisce about someone that
00:02:46
Speaker
that maybe was brought up in a previous chapter by a totally different character. The subsequent character's reminiscence fills you in so much more about who that person was or what they were like 50 years ago, 60 years ago. There's also just
00:03:01
Speaker
Because we're dealing with both octogenarians, but also a certain social set, the interplay among these folks, but also within the context of the folks who work for them, the servants whose almost entire lives are built around, I don't know, the lives of other people, that really comes to the fore. And it's really interesting.
00:03:30
Speaker
There is a sense of this being a kind of a period that's coming to an end, I think, as well. There are some comments even to that effect at the midway point of the novel, but that this is not something that really will persist for much longer.
Historical and Social Context of the Novel
00:03:49
Speaker
not that there won't be more octogenarians actually it seems like there are progressively more and more of them which in some ways may be one of the tensions in the novel that they are all living so very very long as opposed to what they what may have been the case for even 10 or 15 years previous but that you know the character of Gene Taylor who spent
00:04:12
Speaker
60 plus years taking care of another character, Charmian, being her Charmian's maid, but housekeeper and confidant. Those two characters are so deeply intertwined. They almost, in some respects, they can predict each other's responses even though they haven't lived with each other in a few years.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really fascinating social critique as well as being absolutely hysterical, absolutely wicked in a way, right? I mean, the amount of sexual interest the octogenarians express, I don't know, it was moderately shocking for me right now.
Dialogue and Character Interactions
00:05:01
Speaker
I can't imagine what it would have been like in 1959 when it came out.
00:05:05
Speaker
One of the really great things about this novel, I think, and why it's so much fun to read is that it is almost, well, I would say 80% of it is dialogue.
00:05:20
Speaker
And the dialogue is is snarky and funny. She has a lot of fun kind of playing with the whole idea of senility and the fact that, you know, so many of these characters, the people around them are willing to just
00:05:40
Speaker
say, oh, she or he's acting this way because they're senile. When you really come to understand that for the most part, they all have their wits.
00:05:56
Speaker
really well, you know, kind of in their grasp and they're not nearly as dotty and kind of out of it as a lot of people assume. And that's fun too because she's kind of, she's empowering these elderly people I think in a way that even today we don't see
00:06:20
Speaker
we don't see much of in literature. It's fun to see how they're old, but they're still like manipulating each other. And they still have like these ambitions about money and inheritances. And like you said, some of the characters are
00:06:41
Speaker
have been employees and have been house staff for some of the other characters.
Theme of Mortality
00:06:47
Speaker
And of course they know where all the secrets are buried. They're the ones that are also kind of like agitating and digging up trouble for the main characters. But again, there's kind of this
00:07:02
Speaker
I wouldn't use the word occult in this book, but there is this kind of metaphysical kind of thing that's happening that it's like, well, is this really happening to these people or is it in their minds or what really is going on? So I don't know. Maybe we should talk a little bit about the main premise of the book and how the characters are situated and then we can get into it a little bit more fully.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds great. So Memento Mori, the very title of it roughly translates or basically translates to Remember You Must Die. It's a phrase that has been used as a literary, just generally artistic trope for some time. It's also suggested that in the wake of grand triumphs in Rome under the Roman Empire, Roman Republic,
00:07:55
Speaker
that the conquering general would have someone sitting behind them in the chariot during their triumph, reminding them that all things pass, that nothing lasts forever, that you too one day will die. But in the specific case of this novel, it's actually something that's happening, a phrase that's being delivered to the characters. We open with Letty Colston receiving phone calls
00:08:24
Speaker
I think, if I remember correctly, for Lettie, they happened throughout the day, though I think mainly focused between 4 and 6 PM. That's not an especially important detail. But her answering the phone or her housemaid answering the phone and delivering it to her, the voice confirming that it's Lettie Colson and then her being told, remember, you must die. Then the caller hangs up.
00:08:50
Speaker
She's obviously quite perturbed by this. Letty Colston is in her late, I think she's 79 at the start of the novel, almost in her 80s and fairly well off. She is part of a brewery family and
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, she puts in a call to the police to try and have them trace the call, figure out what's going on. And being a more than moderately paranoid person, Letty thinks that, well, through the course of the novel, she thinks many different people are involved in these phone calls.
00:09:31
Speaker
But she brings this concern to her brother, Godfrey, who is married to Charmian. Charmian was a novelist of some renown, and this is all taking place in basically 1958, 1959. Charmian's renown was sometime in the teens and 20s as a novelist, and
00:09:54
Speaker
Charmian is not doing well.
Character Introduction: Alec Werner
00:09:57
Speaker
Godfrey's 88, Charmian's 85, and she seems to be wandering. Her sense of where she is in time, who she's speaking with, tends to slip.
00:10:13
Speaker
From there, we are launched into an incredible cast of characters. We spend a fair bit of time with Gene Taylor, Charmian's former, I mean, what would the term be? Like, housemaid doesn't seem quite correct. I mean, companion is also inaccurate because of the social and job difference.
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I would say that Janet Taylor, and she's referred to most often in the book as just Taylor, which is kind of interesting. She's kind of like the house manager, I guess, for this wealthy family. And I will just note, Tom, that I'm not sure that I'm correct, but in my head when I was reading the book,
00:10:58
Speaker
I was pronouncing Godfrey's wife's name as Charmaine, but that might be wrong. Well, I was actually thinking about that, and that probably is the correct pronunciation, even though it's I-A-N in the book, but it probably is Charmaine, and then the Charmaine that I'm most familiar with, spelling-wise, is M-A-I-N-E at the end, I think, and that's probably just development over time. Also, it's a much easier way to pronounce the name than Charmian. Charmian makes me feel like I'm
00:11:29
Speaker
losing it, quite frankly, as a pronunciation. But yeah, I mean, so from that opening, I mean, this is very much the opening scene is Leti going over to see her brother. Godfrey is a irritable,
00:11:46
Speaker
He comes across as just a real jerk, a man who feels small because of his wife's achievement and a man who's very, very mean to his wife, especially in her reduced state that she is.
00:12:04
Speaker
floating in time that she does sometimes call him Eric, the name of their son. She asks if Taylor is about to bring in the T or not, even though Gene Taylor has been in a nursing home for just about three years at that juncture.
00:12:23
Speaker
From there, we meet Alec Werner, another part of their social set, who is conducting a study into gerontology. He is 10 years younger than Charmaine, so 75, and he has this incredible amount of information about all the people he's interacting with.
00:12:44
Speaker
But on top of that, he has a system for anonymizing them and clearly does not plan for his study to be published while he's alive. That he wants this to come out after his death, but that the papers that would identify these people are all to be destroyed so that all that's left is the data, the results of his study.
Inheritance Conflicts and Lisa Brooke's Influence
00:13:04
Speaker
Which, as I'm sitting here now thinking about it, is madness in its own way because
00:13:10
Speaker
Who else was Alec Warner going to be studying? Like how much, how much data can you really strip away to make it clear that he's not talking about Charmaine Colston and her husband Godfrey and his sister? I mean, there are too many identifying details in a way, just their social standing for to really be cleanly anonymized, I don't think.
00:13:32
Speaker
Well, I love the character of Alec Wright. I thought he was so weird and interesting. He has a penchant for
00:13:43
Speaker
either delivering shocking news or knowing when shocking news is going to be delivered. And then making sure that the people involved receiving the news or giving the news are recording their temperature and their blood pressure and their physical appearance for him, writing it down both for themselves and the others around them.
00:14:10
Speaker
so that he can kind of add that data to his remarkable database. But another cool thing I thought about him was he employs some agents to help him with gathering all of this data and information, most specifically a young lady, I think she's 24,
00:14:34
Speaker
named Olive Mannering. And just their relationship and the way that they interact I think is so funny because I don't think he pays her all that much, but she's so very enthusiastic about giving him the scoop about all of these people in their social circle and
00:14:57
Speaker
divulging the secrets to him. And then of course he's always asking, well, what did he look like the last time you saw him? And what was she acting like? And so it's just like a really quirky, weird kind of guy that's really kind of totally obsessed with this very detailed study that he's doing.
00:15:26
Speaker
about aging. He's a gerontologist. So that's it. I liked his character a lot.
00:15:33
Speaker
His character is phenomenal. I also think that there is a lot of name play going on with the characters in this novel. Godfrey does not profess any particular religion, but his name translates to God's peace. Charmaine is bringer of joy, and that seems to have been what she what she functioned as for much of her life within their social circle.
00:15:57
Speaker
the request on Werner's part to get all this information is always when he's delivering what he thinks is a shock set of news. I know it's not possible to ask you to record your pulse before you've read this letter, but if you could do it right now and let me know if you feel like there's a substantial difference. But the idea that his name's Werner
00:16:20
Speaker
And Taylor in particular, she in so many ways is what stitches together a lot of the action in this novel. She's the one that provides really good information to other people as to what they should do next and what it's going to trigger. And she's the one that like really knows
00:16:42
Speaker
how everyone else is going to react to every bit of information that she puts out there, which is absolutely fascinating and gives a really interesting insight into what it was to run a household in this time. She's also in a nursing home for the entire course of the novel. She lives a pretty vibrant life in the nursing home too,
00:17:11
Speaker
People are dying all around her, her friends and others that she doesn't know so well.
Secrets and Blackmail
00:17:17
Speaker
But there's definitely a social structure in that nursing home and they definitely have their own kind of controversies and issues going on that was interesting. When it comes to names though, don't forget about the side bottoms.
00:17:34
Speaker
Tempest Side Bottom. It's just one of the great names I've encountered in any media in a very, very long time. Yeah, absolutely. It's a little bit of Dickens almost. Yes, yes. And I think it's hearkening back into that as well.
00:17:53
Speaker
Much like we kind of did last episode when we were dealing with ceremony, I mean there's a lot that happens in this novel and we could spend an hour just recounting every, every side story every interaction, and they're all fantastic. I don't think there's really a, a.
00:18:09
Speaker
a thread that isn't followed to its logical conclusion within the context of the novel. But I think the one other bit of plot to really maybe kind of introduce right now is that aside from this phantom collar, because throughout the novel, different people think that
00:18:25
Speaker
this caller doesn't exist. At one point, Alec Werner also gets the phone call and then writes down his notes on it and then associates it within his filing system with mass hysteria. He seems to think, this is probably not actually happening and I've now been infected. Werner has such a casual
00:18:47
Speaker
relationship with how much of his reality is he actually in control of, which puts him at odds at different points with Gene Taylor. But the other bit that kind of gets things moving is the death of Lisa Brooke. Lisa is, well, she was incredibly wealthy. She clearly was not entirely
00:19:13
Speaker
in control of herself towards the end of her life to the extent that her companion made Mrs. Pettigrew was insinuating herself into Brooke's life. In fact, we have been pulled into that life by Brooke.
00:19:32
Speaker
It's this tension over money. Lettie Colston likes to write people in and out of her will, pretty much based on her mood. When Lisa Brooke dies, her most recent will leaves her estate or at least the vast majority of it to Pettigrew. But then that becomes legally complicated by other matters. There's this real tension over money that's running throughout it, but
00:19:58
Speaker
Brooke's relationship to the various secrets and infidelities and indiscretions that pretty much every other character engaged in at some point over the last 50, 60 years keeps coming back up. Lisa,
00:20:14
Speaker
It's not just the money and the inheritance that becomes an issue when it comes to Lisa Brooke. It's her her awareness of what other people did at which times and what other people don't know about what those characters did at those times. That is weaponized by different characters throughout the novel, both weaponized both for positive ends, freeing some people from certain situations and negative ones, blackmail,
00:20:43
Speaker
I mean, blackmail most specifically. So that would be the other real, I think, driver or first mover that gets gets the action of the novel rolling. Yeah, we are introduced to Lisa Brooke basically at her funeral. And that has a whole funny kind of.
00:21:09
Speaker
thing going on with all of these old people and spilling tea and Godfrey hoarding cakes in his suit jacket. But we find out that there's a battle over Lisa Brooks' inheritance. And it's basically between her husband, Guy Leet, and Mrs. Pettigrew. And of course, both of them are claiming the money.
00:21:38
Speaker
One of the allegations as to why Lisa Brooks' husband shouldn't get the money is because their marriage was a sham or it was never consummated. I don't think it's giving too much away to bring Godfrey and Charmaine their connection to
00:21:58
Speaker
Lisa Brooke into this because we find out that Guy was having an affair with Charmaine after she got married, soon after she got married, within a year of her marrying Godfrey. And she was being threatened with blackmail by Lisa Brooke. And so as a consequence, Guy agreed to marry Lisa Brooke
00:22:22
Speaker
to shut her up and protect Charmaine from being exposed. But he knew in marrying Lisa Brooke that it was always going to be kind of a sham because, and I don't know whether this was so clear to you, Tom, but there's allusion made to
00:22:38
Speaker
Lisa Brooks' perversities. So, I don't know, what do you make of that? So, Charmaine and Guy had an affair in like the early 20th century, like 1907 and 1908. And the specificity of the dates becomes really quite something. I mean, Gene Taylor is able to specify like down to the month
00:23:00
Speaker
and location of where the indiscretions took place. But they broke it off and then took up again in the mid-20s. And it was in the mid-20s that Lisa Brooke began the blackmail. And as you were saying, the marriage was never consummated, which I guess had at that time specific legal ramifications. Also, no one knew that they were married. And that's because for Lisa Brooke, and Brooke is her
00:23:28
Speaker
married name. She got married in the early part of the 20th century to a very wealthy man and then the marriage was dissolved. But for Lisa Brooke, it seemed like she needed the control, the taking guy away, the idea that she was married in the background to really make whatever else she did fun for her to give her that thrill that she needed, which
00:23:57
Speaker
I don't know if it's funny. I don't know if it's because Gene Taylor spent so much time with Charmaine that they became so similar in outlook and in life choices. Charmaine converts. I mean, again, we have another convert to Roman Catholicism. When Charmaine converts, so does Gene. And for Gene, it becomes a much more profound conversion than it does for Charmaine.
00:24:23
Speaker
But Lisa Brooke and Mabel Pettigrew, they're very similar. Pettigrew is also a blackmailer, also someone who wants certain levels of control in order to feel a certain kind of sexual pleasure.
Charmaine and Godfrey's Marriage Dynamics
00:24:41
Speaker
And is that because she spent decades with Lisa Brooke? Is that because like attracts like and it builds up over time?
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, those dynamics are ones I don't think you can really totally peel back, but they're really interesting ones to kind of think about, to dwell on in terms of how the characters developed over time and where they end up in this novel. For the first third of the book, I think you feel very sorry for Charmaine because she's very put upon by these characters.
00:25:16
Speaker
Basically, her husband, who I think Alec Warner describes as, or maybe Gene Taylor as well, as he's a bully to his wife. He bullies her. And then when Mrs. Pettigrew loses her position with Lisa Brooke,
00:25:34
Speaker
And the will is being contested so she doesn't know whether she's going to inherit or not. She goes to work for Godfrey and Charmaine and she's horrible to Charmaine. Seriously bullies her, tries to argue with her at every opportunity, saying she's senile.
00:25:57
Speaker
And she's basically doing it because she's afraid that if you know she needs money if lisa brooks will doesn't work out and so she wants to manipulate god free. To name her.
00:26:13
Speaker
in his will and she thinks that the best way or the most effective way to do that is basically to get Charmaine put away in a nursing home somewhere on grounds of senility because she recognizes that God fulfills a certain amount of guilt and attachment to Charmaine and she just kind of wants her out of the picture. I think that we should also mention
00:26:38
Speaker
that Charmaine is an internationally renowned novelist. And one of the so interesting dynamics, I think, that plays out in the novel and is explored is the fact that Godfrey and Charmaine feel more or less enfeebled based upon
00:27:03
Speaker
how much leverage, power, I don't know how you would explain it, but how they are positioned with their spouse. So when Charmaine is down, God frees feeling pretty confident and awesome, but then Charmaine's novels kind of get a whole new generation of readership later in the novel.
00:27:27
Speaker
And there are journalists coming by the house and photographers. And so he's always kind of felt like he lived in her shadow. So as she starts to get very popular again, he starts to feel enfeebled. And Alec Warner is noticing, you know, he's losing weight. He's just a bag of bones. Posture is bad. He looks bad. So yeah, it's an interesting kind of
00:27:52
Speaker
things she's exploring there, I think. And for Charmaine, it doesn't really seem to be as much a physical change as it is her mental state. Absolutely. As she becomes, her novels are reissued or put back into print. So a lovely backlist mentioned there, which I really appreciate it given.
00:28:12
Speaker
given one of the threads of our podcast. But as that happens and she gets that engagement with the public again, she's better able to be present and to have her wits about her, to have greater awareness. And her pushing back against Pettigrew also helps her kind of anchor. But at the start of the novel, Godfrey
00:28:35
Speaker
Godfrey does not come across as an 88-year-old man. I mean, he seems much more vital than that. He seems not to give away his age. And as Charmaine reasserts herself, yeah, he begins to look his age. He begins to show less sexual interest than he had at the earlier part of the novel. Godfrey apparently very much likes to see the
00:29:00
Speaker
the garter belt or the suggestion of the garter on a woman's stockings and so pays women just to kind of hike up their skirt ever so slightly and that's all he seems to be interested in.
00:29:13
Speaker
The first time that happened, that was quite, sort of comes out of nowhere, like, well, okay, I guess this is what's going on here then. Yeah, he's kind of got a fetish. Mrs. Pettigrew, we see her doing it first and he hands her some pounds, some cash. And then with all of Mannering, we see it as well.
00:29:34
Speaker
Maybe that's all that Godfrey can handle at his advanced age. We know that he was quite the womanizer when he was younger, and that's some of the guilt that he feels towards Charmaine and is like a weird dynamic in the relationship that there's this
00:29:52
Speaker
Charmaine is fully aware that he was a womanizer, but he doesn't really know that she was aware. So he's constantly kind of feeling guilt, and you get the sense that she knew all about it. She doesn't really care anymore. And furthermore, she had her own fling going on with Guy Leit that Godfrey doesn't know about. So yeah, theirs is a very interesting relationship, I think.
00:30:21
Speaker
It is interesting that they were together for half a century as they married a couple and yet so thoroughly did not – well, maybe that's incorrect. Godfrey did not really understand his wife. She really seemed to get him.
Eric Colston and Family Strain
00:30:39
Speaker
And she understood his infidelities as an expression of his insecurity with her success. And she further understood that he felt this tremendous guilt over them because however else he felt about her fame and recognition and people's opinions of her intelligence, he attributed a
00:31:02
Speaker
morality to that, that she was better than he was, which fed into then his guilt for having affairs, for stepping out of the marriage, and also manifested in. And it seemed like both of their not very great treatment of their other son, Eric, who shows up at the very end in a very, very odd, odd manner.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah, Eric is mentioned kind of throughout the book. He's a novelist as well. And we kind of get the sense that he's not such a great novelist. He doesn't really have any relationships, so to speak, with his mother or his father anymore. He's 57 years old. And the most that anyone can say about him is that he's a disappointment.
00:31:47
Speaker
his aunt Leti plays with him in terms of the will, you know, disinheriting him one minute, putting him back in the will of the next and letting him know it at each move to such an extent that she suspects perhaps that he is
00:32:03
Speaker
He's the crank caller. He's the one that's been calling and saying, remember, you must die multiple times to her. But of course, we come to learn that almost all of these characters began to get this call. It happens to Godfrey. It happens to Pettigrew, to Alec Warner, as you said. It happens to Charmaine. They all pretty much get this
00:32:29
Speaker
get this call and it causes Letty, at least, to hire a private detective, Mortimer, who's a character I also like a lot. I don't know. How do we describe Mortimer? Mortimer is someone they know from their set, but almost more because of his previous position. He does not seem to occupy – I mean, the majority of these people
00:32:49
Speaker
are wealthy. They have some form of inherited wealth, the Colson's for their brewery, Lisa Brooke through her marriage and a little bit from it seems from her family. Otherwise, Mortimer was a former chief inspector with the Metropolitan Police. He's retired. He's someone they reach out to in or let he reaches out to, to try and use his police contacts to see what's going on.
Mortimer's Investigation of the Calls
00:33:15
Speaker
to see what he can figure out about the situation and he is recently retired, he's 73 I believe and I will say he seems to have the fullest life or at least the healthiest life as it pertains to the next generation and it seems to be in a loving marriage. His wife and he are taking care of one of their grandchildren at one point and it
00:33:41
Speaker
It looks like what you kind of think of when you think of grandparents feeding a two year old and playing with them in the garden, like he just seems contented in a way that none of these other folks seem especially contented. Or maybe it's just he has more than they do at this stage of his life. He has a relationship with his children and his grandchildren. He has a
00:34:05
Speaker
a fuller commitment and perspective on who he is and where he is in the world. Do you think he's taking advantage of these old people and their fear? I mean, he's not young either, but most of them are older than he of these calls that they're getting because I get the sense that he really doesn't believe that he can solve
00:34:31
Speaker
The mystery well that's because he his wife thinks that he's developed these philosophies since his retirement and his philosophy in this case is that it is it's not anyone specific calling them it's death that death itself is what is reaching out to them to remind them that
00:34:52
Speaker
life has an expiration date that they should keep this in mind as they continue to proceed in the world. And I mean, that kind of ties into Alec Warner's thought that it's a mass hysteria. It also ties into Jean Taylor never receives a phone call. And someone asked about that. She comments that the
00:35:14
Speaker
There is a point in the novel where the ward where the retirement home the nursing home that she is in centenarians move in, and much more senile, much further along in like a
00:35:29
Speaker
mental deterioration group is moved into the same room as the one she's in. Not that all the women she's surrounded with are all holding on to their realities as well as she is, but these are women who simply can't take care of themselves any longer. And so when asked about receiving the call, she states that the other women at the end of the ward are her memento mori, her reminder that death comes for us all. Jean Taylor is fantastic. I mean, she is
00:35:59
Speaker
a very, very smart, very interesting, yeah, really, really fantastic character. Much like Mortimer, she has a philosophy and has a way of looking at the world. In her case, it's coming through her Roman Catholicism that she adopted, what, in like 1930? So in the latter third of her life, does she throw herself into this? But yeah, it's,
00:36:27
Speaker
I don't think Mortimer's taking advantage. I think if anything, he's trying to guide them
Jean Taylor's Acceptance of Mortality
00:36:31
Speaker
a bit. There is a bit of a not quite parlor scene where he lays out all of his findings and he all but tells them there's no way they'll ever figure out who did this, that it is happening, but he doesn't state that it's death. But he definitely leaves him with the feeling that he has a peculiar idea about what is taking place here.
00:36:51
Speaker
Yeah, and he tells his wife out of their hearing before they arrived that I think the quote is, death is the culprit. So yeah, it is interesting. Back to Jean Taylor, I think part of how her character is so kind of interesting is that, you know, she was, I guess you would call it
00:37:14
Speaker
for the time in service for her life before she retired to the nursing home. But all of these wealthy people are her friends and they want to take care of her, including Alec Warner. And they're constantly trying to get her to move to a nicer nursing home because she has to share award with all of these other women and they don't think it's very nice for her.
00:37:38
Speaker
And she really wants to stay there because she says that she's made friends. But also I think that she finds value in living and seeing that reminder of death every day of her life to existing within it, which the other characters really don't have. And yeah, so it is quite clever that she never gets the anonymous call. This is also kind of tracking the social changes of the time where
00:38:07
Speaker
this nursing home, seemingly staffed by nuns, some doctors, nurses, et cetera. But it's largely paid for by the government as a social safety net, which hadn't existed previously. And there's some back and forth about the value of this and why is it keeping people alive for so much longer. But when Taylor first goes in, she
00:38:33
Speaker
She resists it, and this comes up as she's reflecting on a new head of her ward, a nun in her 50s, who is in Taylor's mind, fighting against a reality, and the reality is that
00:38:49
Speaker
the woman's aging, that she's past 50, that she is starting to move towards death in a way that maybe she hadn't thought of previously. And after being in that home for two to three years,
00:39:05
Speaker
Taylor doesn't need a more comfortable environment. She is aging, she is approaching death, and she's comfortable with that. I mean, Taylor has an acceptance of her situation and of the reality of the world around her that mostly other characters both don't have, and some of them are aware of
00:39:27
Speaker
aware of that. But most of them are chafing against something that they don't quite understand what they're chafing against Godfrey, in particular, I think, in that regard. And, you know, you keep seeing different pairs of these characters, like interacting, Jean Taylor gets different visitors all the time. And they're telling her parts of stories, parts of what's happening, you know, even though she's in this nursing home, she kind of is very attuned to
Character Conversations and Misunderstandings
00:39:55
Speaker
like,
00:39:55
Speaker
what this social group is doing and the dynamics and the power shifts amongst them and the greed and the clamor for the money. And yeah, I mean, I'll say it again, I'm repeating myself, but just the conversations, the dialogue between these characters, it's just
00:40:20
Speaker
It's just such a joy because it's witty, I guess in a kind of a British witty way. But there's also a witticism here that the characters themselves maybe aren't conscious of being funny or
00:40:35
Speaker
or saying something particularly pointed, but you as the reader do. So you almost feel complicit with Muriel's spark and kind of seeing these characters through their conversations at an angle that sometimes they can't see themselves.
00:40:51
Speaker
And Spark very much plays with some of the frailties of age where characters are talking past each other and are interpreted as being too deaf or too senile. But really, it was just a misunderstanding. You didn't understand that what Godfrey was talking about in this situation was perfectly like in line. You just missed the point. And so you think that he's, you know, just off on some random tangent when really it's multiple conversations taking place at once.
00:41:18
Speaker
different threads all interweaving, but because of the assumptions built in, because they're all in their 80s, they actually refer to hearing aids as trumpets throughout, which is fantastic. But this person's hearing aid isn't turned on, or they've gone and got lost again, that sort of thing, when really that's not the case.
00:41:39
Speaker
And then you throw a character like Pettigrew in there who outright lies about what is taking what someone has or has not done and undercuts, especially with regards to Charmaine throughout the novel and kind of muddies the waters that way. But on the top of the conversations, it's really interesting that Spark is
00:42:00
Speaker
giving us all these characters at this stage in their lives when so much of what would be considered to be the action, the fun part, the real intrigue happened 50 years before. As Charmaine is writing her novels, as these affairs are happening, as they're driving from one person's house to the other, and where did those two sneak off to? Or are they sneaking off? Whose illegitimate child is actually being raised where
00:42:28
Speaker
All of those things are in the rear view mirror for these characters, and yet they're so fascinating. And the intrigue that they're living through right now in some ways feels, I don't know, even more vibrant. At the end of their lives, there's just this incredibly vibrant social milieu that they're a part of, that they're an aspect of. And that's against the backdrop of
00:42:55
Speaker
There are still bombed out buildings from the war. The folks that are much younger than they are. Olive, who you brought up, her grandfather, Percy, we meet very early in the novel and is an absolute nut and wild man and quite in some ways quite dangerous as a result. But Olive is 24.
00:43:15
Speaker
She is getting money from Godfrey to show her stockings a little bit. She is such a valuable person for Alec because all the old men are visiting Olive and Olive is living in this bombed out part of London and seems to be making a lot. I mean, she does do some BBC radio acting, but
00:43:37
Speaker
she seems to be making a lot of her money sort of by the graces of this older generation that is slowly dying off. I mean, same with Eric. He is beholden to what his parents were giving him for money, and then when they cut him off, very much beholden to his Aunt Letty. So there's
00:43:55
Speaker
against this octogenarian, I don't know what to call it, octogenarian bride's head revisited, octogenarian. Peyton plays. Yes. This social comedy, there is this other part that they don't get, that they don't see, that the next generation is trying to contend with and figure out.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's worth noting that Eric wasn't cut off by his parents until he was 45. Yeah, I mean, and when they talk about Eric and when they finally state that Eric is 57, it's like, well, of course he is if they're in their 80s, but he sounds like a petulant child. When we meet him, he is a petulant child and he's 57.
00:44:45
Speaker
It's a really just such. And then this. I mean, I think we knew this when we read the comforters and certainly not shocking three novels in but spark creates such a rich and lived in and
00:45:01
Speaker
breathable world. It's one that you can absolutely imagine or just know exists in some manner, existed in some manner at some point in time.
Olive's Marriage and Motivations
00:45:12
Speaker
What did you make of Olive Mannering marrying Ronald Sidebottom? Quite late in the book and I think he's in his 80s and she's 24? He's 79, so it's okay. All right. Okay, not 80s yet.
00:45:29
Speaker
But there's a 55-year age difference there. I feel like maybe this was an angle Olive was taking because she just disappears. And then when she reappears, it's because she's married. But Godfrey goes to see her one day and does his usual – I mean, this is a man that's been having affairs his entire adult life because
00:45:52
Speaker
He has made great pains to tell everyone that his occultist is in Chelsea, and his lawyer is in Chelsea, and his chiropractor is in Chelsea. But really, that's all so that he can cover the fact that she lives right nearby, and he wants to go see her and see her garters on her stockings. But he goes to see her.
00:46:12
Speaker
initially wonders if he'd gotten lost because she's cleared out, but he double checks. It's the correct basement apartment, but it's like no one had ever lived there. Then we come to find out that Ronald, whom we know she was interacting with because of her conversations with Alec, Ronald proposed marriage to her after his wife, Tempest, died. Yeah.
00:46:35
Speaker
I don't know the way that she just sort of shut down everything, moved out, moved right in. One wonders if maybe this was the long game that all of my been playing the entire time. Cashing out. Yep. And right before Ronald cashes out, because not long after that, Ronald is not doing very well at all. There's also the the thread about Letty and Letty becomes quite paranoid about these
00:47:05
Speaker
these calls. She finds the meeting with Mortimer quite unsatisfactory, not surprisingly. And she doesn't really have any faith that the police or Mortimer as a private detective are going to be able to identify the person that's doing all of this. And so she starts hearing noises in her house. She lives alone. Well, no, she doesn't.
00:47:29
Speaker
For a bit she lives with this housekeeper named gwen but then she freaks gwen out to such an extent because she's so paranoid and hears noises and is always like you know jumping up and checking this and checking that like when finally just. Just leave so she can't take it anymore.
00:47:48
Speaker
Letty, I think, to her own bad end, is maybe the person most affected by these calls. The book opens with her getting the call and something happens that makes you think that, oh, well, she really was deeply and maybe the most deepest way affected by the calls.
00:48:14
Speaker
Each person hears a different voice call and has a different reaction to that voice. Or at least the reaction they have to the voice seems to dictate what they then describe the voices sounding like. And in Letty's case, it's deep paranoia. In Godfrey's case, it's anger, like fury. Charmaine finds it somewhat pleasant, almost like a gentleman caller sort of situation.
00:48:42
Speaker
For Alec, it's very matter of fact, which kind of suits his outlook, which
00:48:48
Speaker
I think feeds into Mortimer's idea that this is death calling and death kind of presenting itself, how it needs to present itself to these different people. But on your point about Letty's take on the police, this line, the police, Dame Letty explained with long tried emphasis, are shielding Mortimer and his accomplices.
Letty's Paranoia
00:49:09
Speaker
The police always stick together. And I just felt like I'm listening to Louise Japp from The Comforters once again, discussing the local constable.
00:49:18
Speaker
I don't know, Murosparque has an outlook on the police and how they function within the larger society, it seems. It's interesting that you brought up the comforters because there were elements about all of Mannering, I have a hard time with her last name, that reminded me of Lawrence, kind of this very astute kind of observant,
00:49:45
Speaker
investigative mind that she's got going in her pursuit of kind of helping Alec Warner with detailing all of his subjects' lives and how they're reacting
00:50:04
Speaker
to different revelations and disclosures and secrets and yeah, there was something a little bit reminiscent for me about her.
00:50:17
Speaker
I mean, I think we're seeing some, we're starting to see some themes develop, yeah, in terms of the characters and in terms of some of Spark's considerations. Or, and this was something we were talking about at the start, I may, before we even began recording, I made a comment of, well, I asserted that Miro Spark has a project, doesn't she?
00:50:36
Speaker
And then immediately started to question whether that was the case. And you pointed out that maybe she's just having fun. Maybe she's just writing to hell out of things and then constructing these novels out of the writing and so on. And I do think there are some thematics developing that we're probably going to be able to pull out more. I don't think we're quite there yet, three novels in.
00:50:57
Speaker
Yeah, obviously she has viewpoints. Obviously she is writing to not just write, but to say things. Yeah, I'm kind of like, I'm still very much trying to figure out where I think, whether there is a larger project in these novels or maybe
00:51:17
Speaker
over a 40 year career, there could be many projects that manifest themselves over time. I think I like so far and what we've read. I feel like Spark has, and you know, I think that she was still fairly, I mean, not young, young, but not elderly when she was writing these three novels, but particularly with The Comforters and this one,
00:51:41
Speaker
I think that she makes the lives of the elderly electric. You know, where in so many works of literature, they're just kind of an afterthought, overlooked, they're boring. You get to the parts where they're involved and maybe you don't read as intensely or you gloss over. No, it's the old people here that have these crazy lives and are so
00:52:11
Speaker
are so interesting.
Overall Themes in Spark's Work
00:52:13
Speaker
Lauren's grandmother in The Comforters, I mean, she's like the best character in that book, I think, just, you know, with her whole diamonds embezzlement scheme. And likewise, you know, there are, like you said, there are some younger characters here, but yeah, the lives of the elderly are just so rich and she does such a good job, I think, of
00:53:00
Speaker
It seems a larger view of things and an appreciation for the fact that life doesn't end at 40. I mean, that's when she that's when she launched this literary career. So, yeah, she absolutely creates these full these complicated characters as.
00:53:02
Speaker
of making them really come alive on the page.
00:53:19
Speaker
as complicated as any person might be as they get older, who've lived enough to have forgotten a lot of what someone, a 24-year-old Olive hasn't seen and hasn't even lived as much as Charmaine or Godfrey or even Letty, who seems maybe the most sheltered of that older group.
00:53:45
Speaker
as much as they've forgotten in the course of their lives. And Spark does a phenomenal job representing that and representing that in the comforters and here at Memento Mori, and even in Robinson. Robinson is older, but he still is
00:54:04
Speaker
He's still a full person. A very weird person, but yeah, he's a very enigmatic person. And and that's also something that I think that Spark does so well. These characters are really quirky and really original. They're not your meat and potatoes, run of the mill Brits. She she unfolds a whole kind of
00:54:30
Speaker
Experience that that they've lived through and and some of their they're just weird character traits It's just really it's just really fun to read her. I think and I can't wait I mean I seriously, you know, just each one we we finish I look forward to reading the next one because I'm not quite sure what we're gonna get but I know we're gonna get something really good Yeah, and that's also I think
00:54:56
Speaker
It's almost the dangerous part is that you put one of these down and you immediately want to pick up the next one. But I'd rather talk about this one, not knowing what's coming next, because I don't want to know too much about what's what's coming next. It's it's sort of a fun. It is a very fun way to go through a writer's catalog, I think, to almost in a much tighter timeframe, but in a similar manner to the folks who who read these things at the time got to progress with Spark along her career.
00:55:25
Speaker
Yeah. And it's also kind of very different from the way we explored Javier Marais, whereas I had a decent grounding in him. You had an excellent having read almost everything by him. This almost feels like we're going into a blindfolded, like we don't know. We don't know where we're going. And it's fun. It's it's very, very exciting. And it's a reminder of how much joy and joy, excitement and the thrill that a great writer can
00:55:54
Speaker
can offer in their work. Yeah. Well, it's been fun, Tom. This has been the fun one. Thanks.