Electric Spark

<p><b>A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: <i>THE TIMES</i>/<i>SUNDAY TIMES</i>, <i>GUARDIAN</i>, <i>TELEGRAPH</i>, <i>TLS</i>, <i>FINANCIAL TIMES</i>, <i>ECONOMIST</i>, <i>NEW STATESMAN</i>, <i>LONDON STANDARD</i> AND <i>WASHINGTON POST</i></b><br><br>'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' <b><i>Spectator</i></b><br>'Unputdownable' <i><b>Financial Times</b></i><br>'Joyously, brilliantly intelligent. In Wilson, Spark has met her true match' <b>Anne Enright</b><br><br><b>From one of our leading biographers and critics comes an exhilarating, landmark new look at Muriel Spark.</b><br><br>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.<br><br><i>Electric Spark</i> 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.</p>