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V. S. Pritchett, in a passage Wilson quotes in a different connection, claimed that the life of every writer contains a break, where “he splits off from the people who surround him and he discovers the necessity of talking to himself and not them.” 

“Well, she certainly wasn’t normal, but not because she was, as some reckoned, a “witch.” Invoking magnetism on a seventh occasion, she noted that it was a gift shared by “all artists.” And as Wilson’s book, after its initial occultist gestures, nimbly and exhilaratingly shows, Spark was a true artist, a natural, set apart from the common run, capable, as the narrator of “The Portobello Road” says, of drawing unusual connections, divining hidden patterns and processes, and making expedient or ruthless use of everything she saw and did.”