was unregistered in obcz-westerpark, many thanks for that. Will be back or otherwise in the wild. By the way, this copy has another front.

on the shelf!

a new book on the shelf :-)

A truly dark ghost tale and a very good novel.

Taken from the book table at the wonderful New Year's meeting in Amsterdam. I couldn't resist the temptation to read something completely different by Hilary Mantel!

As Hilary Mantel is up for the Booker Prize yet again for the third part of her Cromwell trilogy and I’ve never read anything by her, I’d been looking forward to reading Beyond Black, which I picked up at a BookCrossing meeting in 2019 without reading the blurb. Quicker to read than a trilogy about a period of history I know nothing about, I thought. Attractive cover of a medieval-style playing card, I thought. So when I came to actually read it, it was a surprise to discover that medieval figure is pushing a vacuum cleaner and the novel is set in contemporary England. Now, I’m not at all sure where the vacuum cleaner comes into it, but that is beside the point.

Beyond Black has definitely convinced me to read more by Hilary Mantel. Perhaps I missed earlier buzz about it, but I’m really surprised it isn’t better known in its own right. It’s certainly up there in the ranks of wonderful books by British authors who take the supernatural, death or the devil in particular and make fun of it: Terry Pratchett’s Mort and Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch spring to mind.

At first, Beyond Black is the sad story of Alison, a mildly successful touring medium who really does have contact with the spirit world and takes on Colette, an insipid but organised young woman to act as her PA and business partner. Gradually we learn more about each of their lives. Colette has left her indifferent husband. Alison needs support because channelling restless spirits can be exhausting, especially when your spirit guide is a repulsive bookmaker from your working class childhood. And it is flashbacks to that childhood that change something that could have been nothing more than lighthearted story poking fun at gullible punters and the business of mediums, fortune tellers, tarot cards and esoteric fairs into something with a darker heart. Because Alison’s childhood was unrelentingly hard and abusive. Her friendship with Colette turns sour as she turns out to have a hard and vindictive core; she really becomes an emotional abuser herself. The pace slows down in the middle of the book, with plenty of foreshadowing of what really happened to Alison in the past, then reaches a crescendo as the novel comes to its unexpected close.

The way Alison’s background is presented, the reader is wrong footed or at the least thrown off the scent. I was beginning to wonder whether Colette was who she claimed to be, or even which of the characters were actually spirits. Alison seemed to be unable to tell spirit from living person at times and this could be confusing, especially as time is also non-linear in the book, with many flashbacks. I started to make up my own theories as I read about people whose lives were so insubstantial and unrewarding they may as well have been spirits: hard-as-nails beige woman Colette, the misogynistic Gavin and the sad case of Mart, shoved from pillar to post by a system that doesn’t care. Not just entertaining, but touching on issues ranging from bullying, child abuse, lack of self esteem, fat shaming, mental health, what happens to 18 year-olds when they have to leave care, loneliness... All wrapped up in a great story with a (largely)sympathetic main character, with a twist in the tail. I loved it!



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