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Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel
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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
"A multifaceted study of the writer through her work ..."
"Tempting and extraordinary morsels."
"Wilson's investigation into this part of Spark's career provides plenty of drama, both high and petty."
"Wilson, 'taking direction' from Spark's habit of writing character lists for her novels, is at her high-spirited best in creating a grisly gallery of The Poetry Review's former editors and contributors, presented with all of Spark's malice and wit ..."
"Fitfully illuminating the novels ..."
"Wilson revels in her sublimely contrary subject ..."
"Wilson is understandably drawn to a period when a formidable writer devoted her energies to biographical projects ..."
"Wilson does not aim to revise or correct Stannard's more conventional, straightforward biography."
"A darting, innovative example of the form — perhaps more Ouija board than book ..."
"But Wilson often repeats herself…and aims for clever turns of phrase that end up saying too little ..."
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