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Irish Times
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark – a fitting tribute to a writer who found comedy in the blackest corners
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark Author : Frances Wilson ISBN-13 : 978-1526663030 Publisher : Bloomsbury Circus Guideline Price : £25 Muriel Spark's novels 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's spirit. Born in Edinburgh to mostly Jewish parents, Spark was married at 18 and divorced by 26. Before she published her first novel, she'd abandoned her son in southern Africa , generated fake news to the Nazis , and was editor of London's Poetry Review. The book covers the story of Spark's early years, but refracts them through her later works and selves, thus echoing the structure of Spark's own novels, especially the semi-autobiographical Loitering with Intent. Such organisation allows for some unsettling moments. Take Spark's attempts to reunite with her son Robin in the second World War. '[E]verything later went wrong,' Wilson foreshadows. When young Robin moves into his grandparents' house, Wilson notes, 'As it was, Robin arrived at 160 Bruntsfield Place in September 1945 and left it when he died on 6 August 2016.' Wilson triumphs in animating the bonkers world that inspired Spark's fiction – equal parts daffy and disturbing, packed with demented grandmothers and pompous poets. Spark's wartime boss spent hours gathering content about Nazi orgies where 'the lingerie of prostitutes was made from choir robes'. Her Poetry Review successor declared himself king of 'the fantasy micro-kingdom Redonda' and held court in Soho pubs. READ MORE There's more sinister madness: Spark's ex-husband suffered from psychosis, and Spark's capacity to see through human nature made her paranoid. Like her character Jean Brodie, she is a 'creator of fictions obsessed with betrayal'. She also hears 'voices', a possible result of Dexedrine, formerly used as a diet pill. [ In her own words: Muriel Spark at 100 Opens in new window ] However, Spark's trademark is comedy, and so it is with screwball strokes that Wilson chronicles a nervous breakdown that involves the writer TS Eliot. Spark thinks Eliot is sending her coded messages in his play, The Confidential Clerk, and suspects him of other nefarious doings. 'Eliot was posing as their window cleaner … Eliot had broken into her [Spark's] flat to steal her food …' For a writer who found laughter in the blackest corners, is there any more fitting tribute?
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
'Heart-rending and compulsive': The new Literary Fiction you need to read - GUNK by Saba Sams, THE NAMES by Florence Knapp, STEALING DAD by Sofka Zinovieff
GUNK by Saba Sams (Bloomsbury Circus £16.99, 240pp) Sams's debut story collection, Send Nudes, earned its then 26-year-old author a spot on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list in 2023, so it's gratifying that this, her sensitive first novel, delivers. Gunk is the grungy Brighton nightclub where Jules works. She's divorced from its man-child proprietor, Leon, but at 20-something longs for a baby. Which is where 19-year-old bartender Nim comes in. The two are soon friends, and when Nim falls pregnant after a night with Leon, the equation seems obvious: she will just give the child over to Jules. But, as we know from a frame narrative, things don't go to plan. The plots unfolds with a simple inevitability that almost disguises Sams's craft, although there's no missing the brilliance of her scintillating turns of phrase. Imbued with an affecting authenticity of feeling, this is an involving exploration of life, love and family forged beyond labels by one of Gen Z's sharpest observers. THE NAMES by Florence Knapp (Phoenix £16.99, 352pp) The Names is available now from the Mail Bookshop Publishers scrambled to sign up this debut – which also sparked huge auctions internationally – and it certainly boasts an attention-grabbing conceit. In 1987, Cora goes to register her son's name: Gordon, like his father and grandfather before him. But Cora's seemingly kindly GP husband is in fact a violent abuser. Unwilling to saddle her son with such baggage, Cora weighs whether to risk rebelling. What follows are three different narratives: one in which the child does indeed become Gordon; one in which he is christened Bear by his loving sister and one wherein Cora's preferred name, Julian, wins out. With the Life After Life-style narrative proceeding in seven-year leaps, it's a pretext to explore how the lives of the trio play out in the long shadow of terrible trauma. Knapp doesn't shy from emotional gut-punches, but her heart-rending and compulsive tale is ultimately life-affirming. STEALING DAD by Sofka Zinovieff (Corsair £20, 304pp) By the time 70-something Greek artist Alekos dies in London, he's accumulated seven children. But plans for a big family funeral are thwarted by his sixth and final wife, who insists on being the only mourner. Outraged, the far-flung siblings come together and – in the wake of an enlightening micro-dosing session – decide to steal their dad's body and drive him to Scotland for a suitably theatrical send-off. This is the loosest of quest narratives, the free-wheeling style and roving point of view fitting as the clan search for a shape for their grief. I often felt like a bystander as the characters poured over their fractured past, but, if the stakes never felt particularly high, the warmth and sympathy between the bereaved radiates out to the reader.
