Here’s the perfect set-up for a black comedy: an overweight, repressed psychic named Alison must confront her own ghosts—and not just symbolic ghosts, like mere stand-ins of desires and secrets, but actual, real ghosts—the Fiends she calls them. What makes Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel really interesting is that Alison is the real deal. In a live performance in front of an audience in one of the more dramatic scenes in the book, we’re treated to her special skills in action. Nothing sensationalist or jaw-dropping happens; Alison is just a psychic able to tune in and listen to the voices of the dead trying to get messages across. No mysticism here. The dead are just as insufferable as the living; they are bores, petty grudge-holders, boorish, and often liars. It could almost be a sitcom. Alison doles out advice on medical matters and remodeling projects. Here is this powerful psychic mind, and she’s doing counseling for gullible, insecure people. Because we see Alison hold her own so well on stage, it makes all the revelations offstage about her past and childhood that more painful and dark in contrast. Life was never easy for Alison. Even her spirit guide all these years, Morris, is a total lech and low-life. No trace of the dignity of some ancient sage here; no, Alison’s ghost companion is a man that lounges on the floor and fondles himself, a man who often vandalizes children’s car seats in parking lots. A lot of the dark comedy comes from Morris’s annoying antics. But Morris is much more than just comic relief; he stands for everything horrible that has happened in Alison’s childhood—and there is a lot of it. We see glimpses of Alison as a terrified, stunned child throughout the book, as well as get her first-hand account of various abuses she has experienced as she tells it to her friend, Colette. We learn that Alison’s mother was a prostitute and that men, often violent drunks, hung around the house a lot. A sordid, macabre trade of sorts develops: Chopped up body parts. A severed head in a bathtub. Vicious guard dogs constantly barking. Alison has blacked out on most recollections but slowly starts to unspool from her oblivion to remember. Whenever Alison does remember, it is often shared without any pathos or feeling. It comes out matter-of-factly, which seemed odd to me. Collete is Alison’s anchor—a companion, business partner, assistant, and listener. She helps Alison in her moments of psychic crisis when she gets overwhelmed. She also keeps house and handles all of Alison’s business affairs.The gist of the conflict in the book comes as more and more ghouls like Morris start coming out of the woodwork and start harassing Alison. Mantel writes these figures so well; her details about their clothing and faces are vivid; it’s as if these disembodied beings are there in the room, lurking with flesh-and-blood solidity. There is a Thelma-and-Louise kind of dynamic between Alison and Colette that is fun to watch, though by the end it’s transmuted into something far more intimate and dark. When the final confrontation takes place, it feels both anticlimactic and cathartic. Everyone has his or her demons, they say. Beyond Black takes that premise and gives it a literal tune-up.Overall, Beyond Black is a hard book to like and embrace. There’s a choked grimness to the characters’ lives. The vitriol is thick. The banality of the evil that lurks among Alison’s spiteful ghosts can be overwhelmingly depressing, long after you’ve stopped laughing and want to turn away in horror.
Every time I told someone I was reading this book, they inevitably mentioned Wolf Hall, Mantel's most recent novel and winner of the 2009 Booker Prize, and tended to assume I'd chosen Beyond Black because I'd already read Wolf Hall. In fact, the latter doesn't interest me at all; I can't remember where I first saw Beyond Black, but it was the plot outline that drew me in - a black comedy about a professional psychic, her assistant, and the spirits that haunt them - along with a quote from Philip Pullman, proudly displayed on the cover, calling the book 'one of the greatest ghost stories in the language'.As it turned out, the book was absolutely nothing like I expected. The characters were rarely likeable - I think you were supposed to sympathise with Alison and dislike Colette, but I actually preferred Colette, who at least had a bit of an edge and lust for something more, and found Alison rather tiresome. I felt like Alison was only deemed 'charismatic' because she was overweight and thus 'larger than life', while Colette had much more of a personality (eg her forceful haggling with the property saleswoman for discounts and extras on the pair's new house); and as expertly and subtly revealed as the horrors of Alison's misery-lit-worthy childhood were, I had a hard time feeling sorry for her. The women's lives just seemed so completely joyless and drab all the way through the story, from the development of their 'friendship' - which seemed strained at the best of times - to Colette's return to her dull husband. Some recurring details (the continual references to Alison's weight/size, numerous people presuming the two friends were a lesbian couple) just annoyed me. At the same time, I found certain things hilarious when I think they were supposed to be (at least partly) horrifying, for example Alison's constant thoughts of the 'fiends' (just this word in itself made me laugh) and their eventual reappearance with 'modifications'.I had to force myself to finish this novel, because I found it so relentlessly bleak; I do love dark humour, but the comedy here often isn't so much dark as pitch black, and it wasn't exactly something I wanted to get stuck into after a hard day. I can't quite give it less than three stars, however, because the writing is so fantastic - it doesn't surprise me at all that Mantel went on to win the Booker, as the quality of the prose is undeniably excellent. But I was glad to be through with the book, and in the end disappointed. Yes, it's a 'ghost story' in the sense that Alison is haunted by various spirits and manifestations from the afterlife, but the story is really about her relationship with Colette and how she comes to terms with the torments of her past. The book didn't live up to my expectations, and hasn't made me want to read anything else by the author.
What do You think about Beyond Black (2006)?
It isn't the sort of book I would normally read, though I read quite widely, like most authors. I don't believe in clairvoyance, or mediums, or ghosts, or anything of that arcane nature. But Hilary Mantel is a very good writer and she kind of seduces you into this most peculiar world. In essence this is a kind of ghost story. It is a very different ghost story from any other I have read. The two main characters, Alison Hart -- the obese but kindly and likeable medium -- and her strait-laced not so likeable assistant and side-kick, Colette, are brought into conflict with the situation where the ghosts are attempting to take over the scene. And these ain't very nice ghosts.It's all leavened with Mantel's typical sense of humour -- or should I say atypical sense of humour. Because Mantel's sense of humour is odd, whimsical, so when I say typical, I mean typical to her, not typical of anybody else.All in all, it grows into a strange, rich plum pudding of hauntings, rascally behaviour, sexual misbehaviours and hangups, ridiculous situations and even more ridiculous personalities, which, somehow -- and that's the magic -- add up to a very entertaining and interesting book.
—Frank Ryan
There's not much here in the way of plot, but still there's a lot to recommend in this novel about a professional psychic--who really does see ghosts--plying her trade in the working class suburbs of London. The profession itself becomes an excellent metaphor for writing: the spirits though genuine are often difficult to discern, and even when discerned do not always appear when summoned, and therefore the medium is forced to make do with psychological manipulation, theatrical effects, and charlatanry. The relationship between Alison the psychic and her manager Collete is effectively presented, the character of Morris the spirit guide--an obscene, dwarfish bookmaker--is entertainingly vile, and the hints concerning Alison's childhood are predictably dark and deftly placed within the narrative. Where Mantel really excels, however, is in descriptions of threadbare London neighborhoods, the mediocrity of British food, and descriptions of a spirit world equally threadbare and mediocre. The biographical revelations that end the novel are suitably shocking, but I have to admit that by that time I barely cared, principally because the story itself is never compelling. The novel is, however, vivid in language and stylistically impressive. It is definitely worth a read.
—Bill Kerwin
In her novel Beyond Black, Hilary Mantel presents a series of characters who ought to be Mr and Mrs, or Uncle and Auntie Normal. They all live near the M25, London’s orbital motorway and inhabit places as interesting as Slough, Maidenhead and Uxbridge. Even distant Essex gets a mention. But many of these people aren’t normal, or average, or even alive, for that matter. Many of them are in fact the dreaded four-letter d-word, the word that the book’s principal character prefers not to say out loud.Alison is a medium. This m-word applies to her trade, not her stature, which is determinedly out-size. She is a large woman, fat, to be precise, if that is not an f-word. She regularly communicates professionally with the spirit world in front of a live audience. At least some of them seem to be alive. Alison works with an assistant, Colette, a woman with a history of her own. They even live together, but don’t start thinking there’s any funny business between them. Oh no! This is the M25 we are near, after all.Alison and Colette have their own lives, and their own pasts. Alison’s seems to be the more lurid. Mother was a professional woman, the kind that admits to the world’s oldest profession, and so can’t be sure who might have been Alison’s father. The mother and all the candidates for the role of father are now ex, deceased, d-word, but of course Alison is a medium – a large medium – so she can effectively meet with them whenever she wants. One of them is called Keef, but he probably spelled it Keith.Colette’s past is much more mundane, but it has had its ups and downs. She has had her share of dealing with men, enough to have them come back to haunt her. She seems to value the stability offered by Alison’s regular work. They even buy a house together, one of those new ones on an estate. But don’t you think there’s anything going on between them!There are pleasant, even amusing moments in beyond Black. But overall the book is too long and presents little to challenge or inform the reader. These are people we have to take at face value, since their engagement with the world seems to go no deeper than this. And it always seems strange that, given the number of d-word people who clearly don’t exist any more, that a medium quite by chance encounters one of them who knows someone in that night’s audience. The chances of that happening must be very slim indeed, a lot slimmer than Alison, at least.As Alison and Colette examine their past and current lives, Colette starts to tape their conversations with a view to putting it all down on paper. She might even write a book. But the recordings are regularly interrupted by memories from the spirit world who always want to have their own say. At least the dead are electromagnetic. I mean, it’s all in the past. Can’t they just let go? Thus we examine the two women’s identities. Beyond Black presents a sometimes funny, generally entertaining, if rather long read. But it is a book that challenges little and does not inform. It also only inhabits the surfaces of its characters. But then they do live near the M25.
—Philip
