Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr James Bailey chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark. Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

Why James structures Spark’s life as nine partial portraits rather than a unified chronological narrative. How Muriel Spark’s changing appearance during sittings for Sandy Moffat’s portrait provides the biography’s perfect opening scene. Why James preserves Spark’s contradictions and asks open-ended questions instead of pretending to solve her. How extensive archival research allows James to reconstruct vivid scenes without crossing the border into fiction. The challenge of weaving literary criticism and human story together so that Spark’s life and novels illuminate each other. Why cats, cocktails, hairdresser’s receipts, contaminated pens and green gowns are far from trivial biographical details. How James adopts a witty, nimble style capable of accommodating the darkness, eccentricity and comedy of Spark’s life. Why the biography ends not with Spark’s death but with her imaginative return as a meddling authorial ghost.