Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Oct. 22nd, 2009 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London’s orbital road with her flint-hearted sidekick Colette, passing on messages from dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona is a desperate woman: the next life holds terrors that she must conceal from her clients, and her own waking hours are plagued by the spirits of men from her past. They infiltrate her house, her body and her soul, and the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become ...
Alison Hart is a plump medium who can really contact the dead. Colette is a thin, hard-hearted woman whose dissatisfaction with her marriage to IT consultant, Gavin, leads to her becoming Alison’s business manager/personal assistant. Accompanied by Morris, Alison’s spirit guide who delights in revolting behaviour they travel around the home counties to hold séances with a number of other mediums.
The story is essentially Alison’s and specifically how she comes to terms with a brutal childhood spent with a prostitute mother whose brutal boyfriends terrorised the young girl, even as she tried to come to terms with her ability to see and hear the dead. Alison is a kind woman, aware of how she looks to the outside world and yet still vain enough to insist on displaying a photograph that makes her look pretty at all her gigs. It’s only as the book continues that the reason for her placid attitude to life, her resignation to what the punters want and her shame at being haunted by a creature as vile as Morris slowly emerges.
Mantel keeps the revelations coming in a steady trickle, coupling it with the increasingly twisted relationship between Colette and Alison as the former steadily increases her control over the latter, even down to determining what she can and cannot eat. It’s only when Mart, a young homeless boy, takes refuge in the women’s shed that Alison sees an opportunity to take back her life, an opportunity that Morris will do anything to stop.
The writing is wonderful – the séance scenes playing out as stream of consciousness and the flashbacks to Alison’s childhood are dark and twisted. Mantel peppers the novel with sly humour and it encompasses such events as Princess Diana’s death and 9/11.
It’s a thoughtful read and therefore one that goes at a slower pace although the only place it drags is in a visit to Aylsbury towards the end of the book. Also, the conversations between Morris and his friends sometimes run on a little too long and repeat information.
All in all, it’s an entertaining read and one that stays with you long after you finish it.
The Verdict:
A dark novel told at a thoughtful pace, that combines spiritualism with grim reality with such skill that it’s well worth a read.
Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London’s orbital road with her flint-hearted sidekick Colette, passing on messages from dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona is a desperate woman: the next life holds terrors that she must conceal from her clients, and her own waking hours are plagued by the spirits of men from her past. They infiltrate her house, her body and her soul, and the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become ...
Alison Hart is a plump medium who can really contact the dead. Colette is a thin, hard-hearted woman whose dissatisfaction with her marriage to IT consultant, Gavin, leads to her becoming Alison’s business manager/personal assistant. Accompanied by Morris, Alison’s spirit guide who delights in revolting behaviour they travel around the home counties to hold séances with a number of other mediums.
The story is essentially Alison’s and specifically how she comes to terms with a brutal childhood spent with a prostitute mother whose brutal boyfriends terrorised the young girl, even as she tried to come to terms with her ability to see and hear the dead. Alison is a kind woman, aware of how she looks to the outside world and yet still vain enough to insist on displaying a photograph that makes her look pretty at all her gigs. It’s only as the book continues that the reason for her placid attitude to life, her resignation to what the punters want and her shame at being haunted by a creature as vile as Morris slowly emerges.
Mantel keeps the revelations coming in a steady trickle, coupling it with the increasingly twisted relationship between Colette and Alison as the former steadily increases her control over the latter, even down to determining what she can and cannot eat. It’s only when Mart, a young homeless boy, takes refuge in the women’s shed that Alison sees an opportunity to take back her life, an opportunity that Morris will do anything to stop.
The writing is wonderful – the séance scenes playing out as stream of consciousness and the flashbacks to Alison’s childhood are dark and twisted. Mantel peppers the novel with sly humour and it encompasses such events as Princess Diana’s death and 9/11.
It’s a thoughtful read and therefore one that goes at a slower pace although the only place it drags is in a visit to Aylsbury towards the end of the book. Also, the conversations between Morris and his friends sometimes run on a little too long and repeat information.
All in all, it’s an entertaining read and one that stays with you long after you finish it.
The Verdict:
A dark novel told at a thoughtful pace, that combines spiritualism with grim reality with such skill that it’s well worth a read.
