Chris Brookmyre

And Muriel Spark said that the thing was that these people, even though they were on the edge of death often, they were very, very alive and they were still themselves.

You know, when they had their faculties, Godfrey keeps asking, does he have his faculties?

But also this is written by a woman who was active in the Second World War and who had that experience of bombs dropping, that proximity of death as a young person.

And I think that has also found its way into this novel, the idea that you're most alive when you're aware of death.

And so perhaps this voice on the telephone is actually keeping people awake

Alive, bright and alive.

I feel like while the characters are patronised by people who are being old, there's also the reverse of that.

They realise some of the things that meant so much to them in life that burden them are not quite so important.

So there's a kind of...

realising of what, I suppose, in the face of imminent death or the approach of death, you start to realise what was actually important in your life.

And I particularly love the fact that there are characters who are vulnerable to blackmail, shall we say, and liberated by realising this doesn't matter, or you can draw the sting if you simply tell someone.

But they've carried these burdens for decades, or the sort of sexual obsessions.

There's a strange perspective in that

It's sexual obsession viewed around this lens of people in their 70s and 80s.

And I think that's a deliberate device to show how absurd some of these obsessions or worries can be, because once you've reached that perspective, it all just seems rather silly.

He just likes to see the top of a lady's leg and that's fine.

He can just leave it there.

I think one of the wonderful things about this book is the way that Muriel Spark, as the narrator, weaves through everybody's minds.

And I wonder if that's also God's eye view.

Is that something to do with believing in God, that there is this overseeing being that can flip between everybody in the room?