I can't resist a biography of a writer even if it is some time since I've read anything by Muriel Spark. 

This book has had a great deal of attention but I struggled initially to be drawn in. Having heard the author speak at the Aldeburgh Literary Festival yesterday, though, I'm completely hooked. What an extraordinary woman Muriel Spark was...

Best known for 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', Muriel Spark wrote 22 novels as well as biographies of Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte, poems and essays.

Her story has been told before - three times during her lifetime. She wrote her own account 'Curriculum Vitae', then there was a kiss-and-tell from her former partner and collaborator Derek Stanford and finally the biography by Martin Stannard, which Muriel commissioned and then spent 13 years regretting.

In none of these was the true character of Muriel explored, claimed this biographer and also Joan Winterkorn, who worked with Muriel in her later years, and who was in conversation with Frances Wilson at Aldeburgh this weekend.

Muriel's life saw 'divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, skulduggery, blackmail, love affairs, revenge, and a major religious conversion'. All these elements fuelled her novels but above all, Wilson says, Muriel was 'seriously spooky'. 

She was someone with incredible foresight - she wrote about incidents in her novels which subsquently occurred in her own life. A burglary, mental breakdown, being struck by lightning - these are notable examples.

She also loved word games and puzzles and believed TS Eliot was communicating with her through the blurb of his books, in anagrams. 

Seeking to make her biography as 'Sparkian' as she could, Frances Wilson presented the story as 'four Marys' - the women named Mary who were significant in Muriel Spark's life - Mary Stuart, Marie Stopes, Mary Shelley and Mary Stranger. All women with the same initials as Muriel. 

Frances Wilson clearly became bewitched by Muriel. In addition to diving into the two extensive archives of work (Muriel was a hoarder and kept every note, every receipt, and recorded every correspondence), Frances read all 22 novels again in chronological order. And she discovered that they were written as if to a longheld plan from the outset. 'The Comforters', the first novel, begins in the morning and 'The Finishing School' ends at night. 

This is a truly extraordinary presentation of the life of a remarkable and unusual woman, and of course now I want to read all her novels...in chronological order. Brilliant.