{"product_id":"book-oln9","title":"Electric Spark","description":"\"Is the story fact? Is it fiction? It is what it is.\" —Muriel Spark\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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 in her biographies, fiction, autobiography, and archives, Frances Wilson aims to crack her code.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eElectric Spark\u003c\/i\u003e explores not the celebrated Dame Muriel but the apprentice mage. We return to her early years when everything was piled on: divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, skullduggery, blackmail, love affairs, revenge, and a religious conversion. If this sounds like a novel by Spark, it is because the experiences of the 1940s and 1950s became the material of her art.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\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), Wilson brings her powers to bear on one of the most formidable writers of the twentieth century.","brand":"Tantor","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":50031344124208,"sku":"BDoln9","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio CD","offer_id":50031344222512,"sku":"ZEoln9","price":55.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio MP3-CD","offer_id":50031344255280,"sku":"ZMoln9","price":45.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/oln9-cover.jpg?v=1760643669","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-oln9","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}