{"product_id":"wilson-frances-electric-spb","title":"[09\/22\/26] Wilson, Frances: Electric Spark","description":"\u003cp\u003ePicador, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: September 22, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinalist for the PEN\/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography\u003cbr\u003eShort-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe award-winning biographer Frances Wilson presents an exhilarating new look at Muriel Spark, a consummate artist of the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Is the story fact? Is it fiction? It is what it is,\" said Muriel Spark.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuriel 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eElectric Spark\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As good a critic as she is a biographer [and] as sharp a stylist as she is a reader\" ( \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e), in \u003ci\u003eElectric Spark \u003c\/i\u003eFrances Wilson brings her enormous, incandescent powers to bear on one of the most formidable writers of the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45361792811031,"sku":"9781250448170","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/81pSCAAgGJL._SL1500.jpg?v=1785624355","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/wilson-frances-electric-spb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}