Home Books Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel

Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel

Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel

by Frances Wilson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux ·2025 ·432 pages
New Release
Near the Top
Near the Top
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58/99
Top of the Pile

91/99

Critics' Rating Index

Bottom of the Pile

24/99

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Scholars' Citation Index

98/99

Volume of Reviews

36/99

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About This Book

The award-winning biographer Frances Wilson presents an exhilarating new look at Muriel Spark, the most consummate artist of the twentieth century."Is the story fact? Is it fiction? It is what it is." —Muriel SparkThe 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 divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, skullduggery, blackmail, love affairs, revenge, and a major religious conversion. If this sounds like a novel by Spark, it is because the experiences of the 1940s and 1950s became, alchemically reduced, the material of her art.


Reviews

"Wilson does well to focus on the period leading up to The Comforters...because most of Spark's best writing was rooted in her life before 1960."

Colin Burrow· London Review of Books Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Capacious and penetrating ..."

Gwendoline Riley· Times Literary Supplement Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"It's the wealth of down-to-earth detail assiduously amassed here that admirers of Muriel Spark will more likely relish."

Peter Kemp· The Times (UK) Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Wilson is understandably drawn to a period when a formidable writer devoted her energies to biographical projects ..."

Leo Robson· Bookforum Read review ↗ Near the Top

"We may never know, and that's the joy and delight of this book."

Jessica Ferri· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Artful and multifaceted ..."

Miranda Seymour· New York Review of Books Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Wilson's investigation into this part of Spark's career provides plenty of drama, both high and petty."

Brooke Allen· The Wall Street Journal Near the Top

"Wilson, like any good biographer, follows her subject's lead ..."

Audrey Wollen· The New Yorker Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Wilson places Spark's superstitions center stage and guides us through a web of fate and coincidence ..."

Walker Rutter-Bowman· The New Republic Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Wilson's style is so original and engaging that many readers will hope that the second part of Spark's life, covering her life as a famous author until her death at 88 in 2006, will form a future volume ..."

Isabel Berwick· Financial Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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