| Description | Short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Long-listed for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography The award-winning biographer Frances Wilson presents an exhilarating new look at Muriel Spark, a consummate artist of the twentieth century. “Is the story fact? Is it fiction? It is what it is,” said Muriel Spark. Muriel 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.” By 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. It takes us through her early years, when turmoil reigned: 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 her experiences in the 1940s and 1950s became, alchemically distilled, the material of her art. “As good a critic as she is a biographer [and] as sharp a stylist as she is a reader” (The Boston Globe), in Electric Spark Frances Wilson brings her enormous, incandescent powers to bear on one of the most formidable writers of the twentieth century.
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*A 2025 HIGHLIGHT FOR: Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer and Scotsman* 'A brilliant, wonderfully shrewd biography' WILLIAM BOYD 'A joyously, brilliantly intelligent work of biography. In Wilson, Spark has met her true match' ANNE ENRIGHT 'A pitch-perfect, electrifying symphony, reconfirming Wilson's pre-eminence as Maestra of British biography' RACHEL HOLMES 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.
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LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025 'Absolutely mesmerising' SPECTATOR 'Unputdownable' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Brilliant' WILLIAM BOYD From one of our leading biographers and critics comes an exhilarating, landmark new look at Muriel Spark. Muriel Spark was a puzzle, and so too were her books. She dealt in word games, tricks, and ciphers; her life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences and spooky events. In Electric Spark, Frances Wilson aims to finally crack her code. We return to Spark's 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. 'A revolutionary book . . . Leaves conventional biographical techniques gasping in the dust . . . Deceptively supple, astonishingly rigorous . . . I was possessed by this book in the same way that I suspect its author was possessed by Spark' Lisa Hilton, SPECTATOR 'In Wilson, Spark has met her true match' ANNE ENRIGHT 'Whip-smart . . . I raced through it' Ali Smith, GUARDIAN 'Wilson's books are intense, eclectic and wildly diversionary, her intelligence rising from their pages like steam' Rachel Cooke, OBSERVER *A 2025 HIGHLIGHT FOR: Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, Observer and Scotsman* |
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