Beyond Black: A Novel

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 the spirit world she experiences for herself. While Alison offers platitudes and warm greetings to those in her audience, she is almost constantly accompanied by an array of the dysfunctional departed from her own past. Her spirit guide, Morris Warren, is a bow-legged dwarf with a foul mouth and a propensity for exposing himself. Other ghosts that haunt her include Mrs. McGibbit, the motherly old lady who watched her while her own mother, a prostitute, abused and neglected her, as well as Keith Capstick, who pulled a vicious fighting dog off Alison when she was just a child.Alison also gets fairly regular visits from members of the royal family - including Princess Diana, whose death she sees psychically, and who later visits, press clippings pinned to her wedding gown, weeping for the sons whose names she can no longer remember.The constant interruptions from the spirit world put a tremendous strain on Alison and Colette's friendship. While Colette seems to understand Alison's mood swings, she is driven almost to distraction by Alison's poor eating habits. The psychic is huge: the author describes her as a size 26, "a woman who seemed to fill a room, even when she wasn't in it. She was of an unfeasible size, with plump creamy shoulders, rounded calves, thighs and hips that overflowed her chair ... When you came into a room she'd left - her bedroom, her hotel room, her dressing room backstage - you felt her as a presence, a trail."Meanwhile, Colette struggles with the fact that she seems to leave no trace. Perfume doesn't last on her skin. She barely sweats. Her feet don't indent the carpet. "It's as if you wipe out the signs of yourself as you go," Alison remarks. "Like a robot housekeeper. You polish your own fingerprints away."One of the highlights of the novel are the outtakes from Colette's tape-recorded interviews with Alison - tapes that Colette intends to turn into a book. Unfortunately, the recordings are usually indecipherable, because the sound of high-pitched whining, and buzzing, and shouting from the spirit world tends to drown out Alison's answers. Even so, we see snippets of conversation between the two, and get valuable insights into Alison's past and her gifts as a psychic.The most tantalizing revelations involve the mentions of abuse Alison has suffered - something, it seems, that she has in common with other psychics in her field. Colette asks Alison if she has ever suffered a serious blow to the head. "Of course," Alison replies. "Haven't you?"It is, frankly, just enough to make the reader wonder if Alison and her associates are truly psychic, or simply mentally ill. It's also an exchange that's perfectly suited to the overall theme of the book - a sort of dark humor that truly goes "beyond black."The novel isn't always an easy read. A lot of the story is revealed through the jumbled imagery and symbolism that seem to be the hallmarks of a psychic reading. But all in all, Beyond Black is a darkly humorous book that treats the subjects of psychic ability and friendship with the respect they deserve.

I am a Mantel fan, and I have enjoyed her books in the past. Saying that, Beyond Black was a big disappointment for me.Mantel is a wonderful writer, and her clever prose is apparent in this book. It's the plot and characterization that I found so troublesome, and this was not a page-turner at all for me.Summary, no spoilers:Alison is a very sweet, and very obese psychic. She meets Colette, who is in the audience at a show where Alison is doing readings.Colette is a young woman who is described as very nondescript...kind of beige. She has few friends, and marries a cold and equally nondescript husband. She seems devoid of much passion or personality, at least when we first meet her. She was the most problematic character for me, and she seemed the most incomplete.Alison hires Colette to be her assistant, and help with her business affairs. It's never really clear why Colette is chosen, and it's also never clear why Alison keeps Colette, who is verbally and emotionally abusive to Alison under the guise of caring and concern. (She constantly calls her "fat".) I understood that Alison had her need for Colette, but I never felt that was enough to explain her keeping her on, especially towards the end.Alison is a very gifted "Sensitive", and she is often visited by a horrible ghost named Morris, who unfortunately is her "spirit guide". Alison is often plagued by nightmares, and by visitations from a group of fiendish men, whom we understand Alison may have known in her youth. Her life is full of horrors, and as the book progresses it starts spiraling out of control.Without giving anything away, we come to understand that Alison has had an unbearably horrible childhood, and those traumas have obviously impacted her present world.Part of my problem with this book may be my own: I am not particularly wild about stories involving psychics and spirits, but I have enjoyed such books in the past.The real problem with this book, for me, was that the characters and plot seemed so incomplete. I felt like this was a rough draft of part of a novel, rather than a completed work. And there were *endless* boring and tedious paragraphs consisting of the ramblings of the various ghosts, and fellow Sensitives.I really wish I could give this book more than 3 stars, because there are some well written passages, and Mantel is a gifted writer. But this one just didn't work, and it was really an effort to make myself finish.As far as a choice for a book club, I will say there are things to discuss. And there are things deliberately left ambiguous, which I thought was a nice touch.Too bad this couldn't have been pulled together into a more cohesive and entertaining book. The first 100 pages were pretty good and I was hopeful, but it just went downhill quickly after that.

The novel starts off well and then descends quickly into a dark, depressing and uninteresting tale.

This was the first Hilary Mantel I have read. It is a bit "all over the place". I am 2/3 of the way through and the middle bit is quite different from the beginning. Not sure what point she is trying to make and I am having trouble convincing myself to go on.Having said that, her writing style is impeccable.However there a few editing errors in the Kindle version. There are a few pages where words run together and other pages where words are unnecessarily hyphenated which detracts from the flow of reading.

I very much admire and enjoy the writing of this author but this novel is not for me . I found it far too long as I waded through the tedious lives of characters I did not find interestingMaybe it is just that I have problems with the occult.

A good read, but a bit weird.

Beautifully written. intriguing and interesting premise. Just disappointed with the final part of the book.