The action starts when an aging Brit picks up the phone and hears a mysterious voice on the other end: “Remember you must die.”

Pretty soon, multiple characters in Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori receive these pesky calls.

I wasn’t sure I would like a book filled with wrinkly oldsters taking tea and answering nuisance calls. But it wasn’t long before Dame Lettie, Mrs. Pettigrew and the grannies won me over.

Dame Lettie can barely haul her girth up a flight of stairs. She constantly changes her will, depending on who she argued with that day.

Charmian Colston is an author long past her glory. She issues instructions to her maid, Taylor. The problem is, Taylor left Charmian’s employ quite some time ago.

Alec Warner, fussy old sociologist, ends every conversation by jotting down lab-accurate notes and filing them in the cabinets back at his flat. Either he’s leaving some great field notes for future archeaologists, or he’s planning quite a novel.

Mrs. Pettigrew is the kind of household help that ends up named in her employer’s will. Is it because she fluffs the couch pillows just right or is she up to something else?

Then there are the grannies, a dozen women confined to the hospital ward. Granny Valvona keeps the whole crew up to date on their horoscopes and Granny Barnacle invents a more fitting name for the nasty new charge nurse.

These folks are linked together by old rivalries and romances. No wonder old Alec takes loads of notes. By the time a human reaches 83-years-old, he or she is material for a dozen books.

The only thing more fun than reading this book would be watching the movie. Why haven’t they made it yet?

Photo on Visual hunt