Who knew a book about a group of elderly people contemplating death could be so funny? Dame Lettie Colston is the first to start receiving the phone calls from a mysterious stranger who says, “Remember you must die.” She's a managing sort of woman who spends a lot of time changing her will. She suspects her nephew of making the calls to get his inheritance quicker, so she cuts him out. Then she suspects the retired Inspector she's hired to investigate the calls, so she cuts him out of her will too.
At that point her brother, Godfrey, starts getting the calls, as do other friends. One of them, Alec, has made a lifelong study of aging, taking meticulous, cross-referenced notes on his subjects: friends and family, expecting to learn the secrets to staying young. He especially likes tracking the progress of Godfrey's wife, Charmian, as her dementia waxes and wanes. He also likes to stir up trouble, especially if he can check the person's pulse and blood pressure before and after.
They all visit Miss Taylor, Charmian's former maid, who in spite of having the most common sense has been reduced by advanced age and disability to residing in a public ward for elderly women. They are all addressed as “Granny” and treated as though mentally incompetent. Some of them are, but not Miss Taylor. Her reaction to the calls, when Dame Lettie consults her, is that she should ignore them. She says, “‘Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield.'”
The calls continue as the various characters pursue their goals, whether it's getting the new Ward Sister transferred or indulging in blackmail. In the course of their activities, secrets from their past trickle out. Although I laughed, I did come to care about these friends and enemies who are in the last stages of waiting for the up elevator. I hadn't read any of Sparks's books except The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie back in my teens, but am now inspired to go back and look them up. Sparks herself passed away in 2006.
