Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark <\/p>\n
Author: Frances Wilson<\/p>\n
ISBN-13: 978-1526663030<\/p>\n
Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus<\/p>\n
Guideline Price: \u00a325<\/p>\n
Muriel Spark\u2019s novels<\/a> are gemstones, their complications condensed into a hardness that eviscerates. They are deceptively slight (most run under 200 pages) and difficult, words that could describe their petite-statured author, who was as much of a puzzle-mystery as her creations. Writing a biography about her presents a challenge, one that Frances Wilson meets in her sly, unsentimental Electric Spark, which manages to hew closely to its subject\u2019s spirit.<\/p>\n Born in Edinburgh<\/a> to mostly Jewish parents, Spark was married at 18 and divorced by 26. Before she published her first novel, she\u2019d abandoned her son in southern Africa<\/a>, generated fake news to the Nazis<\/a>, and was editor of London\u2019s Poetry Review. <\/p>\n The book covers the story of Spark\u2019s early years, but refracts them through her later works and selves, thus echoing the structure of Spark\u2019s own novels, especially the semi-autobiographical Loitering with Intent. Such organisation allows for some unsettling moments. Take Spark\u2019s attempts to reunite with her son Robin in the second World War. \u201c[E]verything later went wrong,\u201d Wilson foreshadows. When young Robin moves into his grandparents\u2019 house, Wilson notes, \u201cAs it was, Robin arrived at 160 Bruntsfield Place in September 1945 and left it when he died on 6 August 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson triumphs in animating the bonkers world that inspired Spark\u2019s fiction \u2013 equal parts daffy and disturbing, packed with demented grandmothers and pompous poets. Spark\u2019s wartime boss spent hours gathering content about Nazi orgies where \u201cthe lingerie of prostitutes was made from choir robes\u201d. Her Poetry Review successor declared himself king of \u201cthe fantasy micro-kingdom Redonda\u201d and held court in Soho pubs. <\/p>\n There\u2019s more sinister madness: Spark\u2019s ex-husband suffered from psychosis, and Spark\u2019s capacity to see through human nature made her paranoid. Like her character Jean Brodie, she is a \u201ccreator of fictions obsessed with betrayal\u201d. She also hears \u201cvoices\u201d, a possible result of Dexedrine, formerly used as a diet pill. <\/p>\n