About the Book
'Absolutely mesmerising. I was possessed by this book in the same way that I suspect its author was possessed by Spark. It still hasn't put me down' Spectator
'Unputdownable' Financial Times
'Joyously, brilliantly intelligent. In Wilson, Spark has met her true match' Anne Enright
From one of our leading biographers and critics comes an exhilarating, landmark new look at Muriel Spark.
The word most commonly used to describe Muriel Spark is 'puzzling'. Spark was a puzzle, and so too are her books. She dealt in word games, tricks, and ciphers; her life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences and spooky events. Evelyn Waugh thought she was a saint, Bernard Levin said she was a witch, and she described herself as 'Muriel the Marvel with her X-ray eyes'. Following the clues, riddles, and instructions Spark planted for posterity in her biographies, fiction, autobiography and archives, Frances Wilson aims to crack her code.
Electric Spark explores not the celebrated Dame Muriel but the apprentice mage discovering her powers. We return to her early years when everything was piled on: divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, skulduggery, blackmail, love affairs, revenge, and a major religious conversion. If this sounds like a novel by Muriel Spark it is because the experiences of the 1940s and 1950s became, alchemically reduced, the material of her art.
About the Author :
Frances Wilson is a critic, journalist and the author of six works of non-fiction, including The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography; Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas de Quincey, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize; and Burning Man: The Ascent of D.H. Lawrence, which won the Plutarch Award, was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Award and was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.
Review :
A revolutionary book. When Spark published her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957, it was recognised as unique – something that quite simply had never been done before. Wilson's achievement in Electric Spark is equally remarkable: an entirely original method of life writing which leaves conventional biographical techniques gasping in the dust . . . Electric Spark heaves with ghosts and furies, burglaries and blackmail. It is disquieting and absolutely mesmerising. I was possessed by this book in the same way that I suspect its author was possessed by Spark. It still hasn't put me down
Wilson is not any old biographer. Her books are intense, eclectic and wildly diversionary, her intelligence rising from their pages like steam – and in Spark, the cleverest and the weirdest of them all, she may have found her ultimate subject
I raced through Frances Wilson's whip-smart Electric Spark
Electric Spark is a darting, innovative example of the form – perhaps more Ouija board than book . . . [Wilson's] own surveillance is through a magnifying glass and her book is a fire-starter
Biography, then – which Frances Wilson attempts in this beautifully written book – is the closest readers can get to Spark . . . "Sparkian" has not entered common parlance but, by the time you finish this brilliant book, you think it probably should
Wilson combines meticulous scholarship with graceful lyricism in a sympathetic yet unflinching portrait that is as ruthlessly precise as any Sparkian one-liner. Hypnotic, disquieting and gleefully heretical, Electric Spark crackles with the brilliance of both subject and author
So original and engaging . . . The result of this blend of existing sources and fresh archival finds is an unputdownable and “electric” perspective on the extraordinary talent and life that together forged Spark's fiction . . . A fabulous achievement, in more than one sense
A deeply intelligent, captivating and passionate work that reminds us of everything a literary biography can and should be
A dynamic and dizzying weave of early struggles and future success
A brilliant literary critic and chronicler turns her sharp-eyed attention to the life and works of Muriel Spark, a writer of odd and compelling genius herself. Sure to be one of the most compelling biographies of the year, if not decade
I've always enjoyed Muriel Spark's droll wit, and there is plenty on offer in Frances Wilson's biography of the author . . . Wilson expertly dissects the author's writing . . . A welcome reminder to return to a gloriously talented novelist
A fitting tribute to a writer who found comedy in the blackest corners . . . Frances Wilson's sly, unsentimental biography hews closely to its subject's spirit . . . Wilson triumphs in animating the bonkers world that inspired Spark's fiction – equal parts daffy and disturbing, packed with demented grandmothers and pompous poets
A multi-faceted study of the writer through her work . . . Spark adored puzzles and games, and would surely have welcomed this approach. Not only because Wilson follows the clues with such intelligence and respect, but also because she shares the novelist's scholarly knowledge of nineteenth-century literature . . . The story of Spark's remarkable life proceeds with pace and wit
An innovative biography that recreates Muriel Spark's life and, more important, her imagination. Frances Wilson brings together an eclectic and riveting set of material, revealing Spark's unbalanced obsession with codes and mysteries, her fascination with particular role models, and the deliberate lies which she and others told about her life. Rather wonderfully, Wilson's style apes her subject's interests in disrupted chronologies, lacunae and cryptic clues
An original and engaging exploration of the making of an exceptional yet enigmatic literary figure
A canny biography of the early career of this strange, brilliant novelist
Wilson shows real perception and understanding of her subject – more than can be found in any other critical book published so far . . . Atmospheric and compelling
In [Electric Spark], Frances Wilson revels in her sublimely contrary subject . . . Wilson borrows Spark's own mystical whimsy about the relationship between her life and her work
Wilson's investigation into this part of Spark's career provides plenty of drama, both high and petty
Wilson takes Spark at her word here, mining several of the novels and short stories for clues about the person. The result is illuminating and diverting, though in the end the subject remains satisfyingly elusive . . . Beautifully drawn out . . . Insightful
This brilliant book grapples with Muriel Spark, the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Ballad of Peckham Rye and twenty other novels. Her life is characterised by the same strange, stark abruptness as her prose
What was it about Spark that made her such an ornery piece of work? Wilson comes up with shrewd, convincing and beguiling answers
Pitch-perfect biography
A new, rich and well-researched biography by Frances Wilson . . . Illuminating and enjoyable
This incisive and captivating biography of Spark, the prolific Scottish-born novelist best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, uses an unconventional lens, approaching Spark through “four Marys”, each representative of a period of her life. Wilson captures her subject's conversion to Catholicism, the near-mythological genesis of her fiction and much more
Wilson is full of brilliant apercus . . . giving you the lowdown on this very grand but also moving master of creating fiction
Fluent, personable, alert to her subject's eccentricities and often witty
Electric Spark is Wilson's tribute to that one-of-a-kind heroine. She applauds Spark's ability to lace together "with the elegance of a sonnet” characters and narratives from her mountains of research – a description that could equally apply to Wilson's own scholarly and literary flair
Muriel Spark was an enigmatic literary figure, best known for her 1961 novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In her Baillie Gifford Prize shortlisted biography, Wilson – biographer of D. H. Lawrence and Thomas De Quincey – traces Spark's early years in Edinburgh, Africa and then London, exploring the writer's life up to the age of 39, when she published her debut novel The Comforters
So elegant . . . shot through with the coincidences that Spark felt defined her life . . . Wilson's triumph is to accept the idea that while the life inspired the work, the work created the life . . . Playful and sympathetic but does not sink into sentimentality . . . Muriel trips through its pages, and it is not difficult to believe she guided Wilson's hand
An intense but fascinating account that draws on the writer's fist six novels and other work of the time to explore how Muriel Spark became Muriel Spark, and why it took her so long
Awe-inspiring . . . Provides excellent accounts of Spark's episode of Dexedrine-driven mental illness, and also of her subsequent conversion to Catholicism
A brilliant, wonderfully shrewd biography, expertly illuminating the most elusive and shape-shifting subject that is Muriel Spark
Treachery, lies, fantasy, God, everlastingly unsatisfactory sexual relationships . . . This miraculous narrative unravels the creative process of a brilliant novelist
A joyously, brilliantly intelligent work of biography. In Wilson, Spark has met her true match
A pitch-perfect, electrifying symphony – reconfirming Wilson's pre-eminence as Maestra of British literary biography
Dame Muriel's life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences and spooky events that influenced her writing. In this biography, Wilson sets out to solve the puzzle of “Muriel the Marvel with her X-ray eyes”
A writer's writer who will no doubt inspire her own cult following
The most original voice in life-writing today
