Beyond Black

This book is a beautifully crafted view into a place that few of us may ever choose to go. At least, I hope so for our sakes. It begins with a slow and friendly pace, touring us through its not always pleasant characters' lives. By the time it ends, I felt I had a stake in what happened and was genuinely concerned with whether Allison survived her traumatic visitations. The best I can say is that it felt utterly true to me, which is saying a good deal. It is not, however, for the casual reader looking for a fun airplane read. I don't think that would be satisfying. The book demands time be spent with it, and I felt the time was well worth it, if at times a bit grueling.

Hilary Mantel returns with her first novel for six years. The highly acclaimed author, in her tenth novel, Beyond Black, follows her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Set in the suburban dormitory towns around London's orbital motorway, the new novel follows a medium who makes her living by passing on the messages of the dead. Great book. Something to sink your teeth in!!

Alison is a reader, a genuine psychic who, exhausted by the rigors of her demanding profession, often ignores the business side of her trade. Thus, she is pleased when she is approached by the prissy and officious Colette, who recently ended both her employment and her marriage. Sensing they can be of aid to each other, Alison invites Colette to take over her business affairs; this Colette does, at first slowly, then with more gusto, arriving at the point where she's even planning the overweight Alison's daily menus. Friendship and respect degenerate into conflict and disdain. Although the supernatural plays an important part in this book-for instance, Alison's greasy spirit guide, the loathsome Morris, is introduced within the book's opening pages--Mantel seems more interested in capturing the complexities of the relationship between the two women, chronicling the ups and downs of their relationship. Alison and Colette are initially good for each other, but the very aspects of their personalities that allow for this are also the ultimate cause of their estrangement. Mantel subtly exposes these strengths and weaknesses, providing fascinating glimpses into the complex psyches of her two damaged protagonists. Mantel loves to play the mundane off the fantastic. For instance, Alison foretells Princess Diana's death, but most of the distress she feels is not over the impending death, but because of the increased work load that the event will bring her. Equally fascinating is the work a day world of sensitives/readers Mantel so realistically portrays; as much performers as they are gifted, their experience plays almost as important a part in their presentations as do their psychic talents. At times, it's difficult to tell whether Alison is relying on tradecraft or supernatural gifts to work her audiences; readers get the feeling that even Alison doesn't always know. But, rest assured, Alison's gifts, born of a great trauma which Mantel thoroughly explores, are genuine. Dark, touching and amusing, Beyond Black combines a compelling character study with an intense focus on social mores and attitudes. Reminiscent in many ways of Christopher Priest's 1995 masterpiece The Prestige, the novel brings this small world to vivid life, transporting readers to a strange, exotic, landscape where the past exerts a powerful hold over the present, emotionally, psychically and physically.

I'm a certified tarot master, so it was the tarot cards on the cover of "Beyond Black" that first caught my eye. As I read the book, I was pleasantly surprised at how well Hilary Mantel dealt with the cards ... if you'll excuse the pun. This is a version of a review I posted on my tarot website: Psychic mediums like John Edwards, Sylvia Brown, and James van Praagh have rocketed to fame in the United States, and apparently the phenomenon is well-known in the United Kingdom, too. Beyond Black explores the backstage world of psychic shows and psychic fairs, through an intimate look at the lives of an English psychic named Alison Hart - a "sensitive," in her own words - and her business manager, Colette. While Alison is primarily a psychic, she also reads tarot cards ... and she reads them well. In fact, the author clearly understands the cards, and her descriptions are more than simply accurate: they are poetic. Take this passage, for example, as Alison waits for a client at a psychic fair: "Her tarot cards, unused so far today, sat at her right hand, burning through their wrap of scarlet satin: priestess, lover, and fool. She had never touched them with a hand that was soiled, or opened them to the air without opening her heart." Colette, a divorced secretary, turns out to be a remarkably effective partner in Alison's business. Before Alison goes on stage in little towns across the English countryside, Alison checks sound and light, and gauges the mood of the crowd. She runs a microphone to "contacts" in the audience. She develops Alison's advertising campaign, schedules her private readings, and fights for every tax break Alison can get. She even stays up late, tea and sandwiches at hand, to help Alison ride the wave of mania that follows her public performances. While the novel is set against the backdrop of the psychic world, Beyond Black is really a study of friendship - in this case, a strained and troubled friendship. Alison needs Colette's help at all hours of the night and day, so they live together. Before long, Colette has managed Alison's affairs so well that the two are able to afford a new home in an rural subdivision. Their neighbors naturally assume that the two are lesbians; neither one attempts to correct that impression. In fact, for their own privacy, neither will even say what they do for a living. Collette tells some of the neighbors that Alison is a forecaster; for years, Alison tries to understand why those neighbors tease and question her about the weather. A new home was important to Alison, who is routinely tormented by the ghosts and spirits that haunt every old building and old neighborhood she enters. When she and Colette travel, they even try to stay in new hotels, to avoid the suicides in the stairwells, the sobbing chambermaids in the bathrooms, and the murder victims that lay forever in their beds. Sadly, there is a decided difference between the peaceful afterlife that Alison describes to her clients, and t