Beyond Black

Hilary Mantel has gotten a bit of a reputation for being a great author (she's won two bookers which is a fairly significant literary award and not a huge amount of people have won two so it's a pretty big deal) so I decided I wanted to see what the fuss was about and opted for this novel (which I chanced upon in my favourite second hand book shop, it contains thousands of books stacked to the ceiling and i've spent many a happy afternoon trawling for bargains there. If you should ever be in Belfast I would absolutely recommend a visit). In this novel we meet Alison, a morbidly obese, kind hearted psychic who seems to genuinely be able to contact/be contacted by the dead. Colette is a thin, mean woman who turns to psychics during the failure of her marriage and winds up becoming Alison's assistant or as she prefers to be referred, her manager. And along with Morris, Alison's spirit guide who is nasty in every sense of the word they travel around london holding psychic fairs where Alison passes on messages from the dead to the audience. The story is Alison's and as we get further into the book it becomes apparent Alison, had a terrible childhood, her mother essentially a prostitute had all sorts of horrible men around the house, men who kept dogs for fights, petty thieves, basically an unscrupulous bunch with abuse more than hinted at, she also had to deal with the onset of her psychic abilities at a young age with the dead wanted to find other people that had passed they had known. So all fairly traumatic then, Mantel intersperses the traumatic bits with humour though, it's quite a dry dark humour which suits me right down to the ground. The development of Colette and Alison's relationship in particular had many laugh out loud moments, Colette is as it turns out really quite a hard hearted woman who becomes more and more controlling and nasty to Alison, putting her on a diet, rationing her toast, and there ends up being very little to like about her whereas Alison becomes an increasingly sympathetic character. We watch as the novel progresses Alison having to deal more and more with her past, which is literally haunting her, Morris having a link to the men from her childhood and spending his time looking for his these men, his old mates. It's about then dealing with your past then really, Alison having to deal with these old spirits, the way you or I might have to confront bad memories in order to move forward. Mantel lives up to all the hype, she's a terrific writer and this was an enjoyable novel, for all the ghosts it contains it is not a ghost story so if you read it don't approach it looking for a scare, it is creepy in parts but it's lots of other things too. 4 out of 5.