In her 1992 memoir Curriculum Vitae, the novelist Muriel Spark describes her childhood neighbor in Edinburgh named Nita McEwen. Spark and McEwen did not know each other well, but their “physical resemblance was often remarked upon.” Years later, Spark encountered McEwen in southern Rhodesia, where both young women were living with their husbands. Spark’s new marriage was unhappy, but McEwen’s was worse: her husband murdered her, then killed himself. Spark used this event as the basis for a short story. 

But Frances Wilson isn’t buying it. In her research for Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, the biographer found no news accounts of the murder-suicide, nor any evidence of McEwen’s birth, schooling, or existence. She posits the doppelganger is a figment of Spark’s imagination, a vision of what her life might have been like if she hadn’t left her first husband. It’s also a manifestation of Spark’s love for word puzzles and the plot device of doubling: McEwen is an anagram for Twin Menace. Wilson’s sleuthing captures Spark’s elusive and fascinating character, as well as the biographer’s familiarity with the great novelist’s habits, interests, and techniques.

Spark, born Muriel Camberg in 1918, did not publish her first novel until she was 39 years old, and was not wealthy and famous until the early 1960s. But Wilson isn’t interested in Spark’s prime; she wisely explores the lean and formative years, when Spark struggled as an editor, critic, and poet. Spark’s life was certainly more varied and tumultuous before she settled into a career as a novelist.

Spark was born and raised in Edinburgh, the working-class daughter of a Jewish factory worker and a Christian piano teacher. She described herself as a “Gentile Jewess,” one of many........

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