Article: Chaos and comfort

BOOK OF THE WEEK Muriel Spark: the biography By Martin Stannard WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON Pounds 25 (627pp) Pounds 22.50 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 08430 600 030

It remains a mystery why Muriel Spark commissioned Martin Stannard to write her authorised biography 17 years ago. She had just published her rather sterile Curriculum Vitae: A volume of autobiography (1992), which had ended with the publication of her outstanding first novel The Comforters (1957). A second volume of memoirs did not appear, although it was planned. At the age of 74, and beginning to suffer from ill-health, Spark clearly wanted to add to the 19 novels that she had published to date, not to mention her ...

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