A revolutionary book. When Spark published her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957, it was recognised as unique – something that quite simply had never been done before. Wilson's achievement in Electric Spark is equally remarkable: an entirely original method of life writing which leaves conventional biographical techniques gasping in the dust . . . Electric Spark heaves with ghosts and furies, burglaries and blackmail. It is disquieting and absolutely mesmerising. I was possessed by this book in the same way that I suspect its author was possessed by Spark. It still hasn't put me down

Lisa Hilton, Spectator

Wilson is not any old biographer. Her books are intense, eclectic and wildly diversionary, her intelligence rising from their pages like steam – and in Spark, the cleverest and the weirdest of them all, she may have found her ultimate subject. It's certainly delicious the way she casts shade on some of those who came before her . . . Her achievement in Electric Spark, a brilliant book by any standards, isn't to explain the writer (this is impossible, and she knows it), but to be somehow carried along in her slipstream. There is an uncanny closeness between biographer and subject at play here, and I find myself wondering whether Wilson didn't feel at times as if her manuscript wasn't a form of automatic writing

Rachel Cooke, Observer

I raced through Frances Wilson's whip-smart Electric Spark

Ali Smith, Guardian

I've always enjoyed Muriel Spark's droll wit, and there is plenty on offer in Frances Wilson's biography of the author . . . Wilson expertly dissects the author's writing . . . A welcome reminder to return to a gloriously talented novelist

Martin Chilton, Independent

So original and engaging . . . The result of this blend of existing sources and fresh archival finds is an unputdownable and “electric” perspective on the extraordinary talent and life that together forged Spark's fiction . . . A fabulous achievement, in more than one sense

Isabel Berwick, Financial Times

Admiring yet sceptical . . . A dynamic and dizzying weave of early struggles and future success

Anthony Cummins, Mail on Sunday