Beyond Black: Hilary Mantel

Review by Gill


If you're pagan and you've been in a bookshop in the last few months, You've probably noticed this one. Not only is it in the three for two offers at Waterstones, it also has a beautiful cover in the style of the Swiss tarot, showing a bored looking lady (possibly the High Priestess?) doing the hoovering....

The cover blurb calls it "One of the greatest ghost stories in the language", but that could give you the wrong impression. It's certainly a ghost story, and certainly a good book, but if you're used to M R James or ladylike Victorian haunted houses, this might come as a bit of a shock. If, on the other hand, you're accustomed to talking to (or hearing others talk to) the recently departed, it'll be depressingly familiar.

This is the story of Alison, a professional stage medium, and her stubbornly earthbound assistant Colette. As they travel around the bleak towns around the M25, we get glimpses of both Alison's communication with the dead, and her communication with her own, terrible childhood memories - and of how they overlap. It makes for grim reading, though there's enough black humour to see you through.

This definitely isn't the romanticised version though - the spirits of the departed are far more interested in where they left their cardigan or how to fine their former friends than in any sort of spiritual enlightenment, and the `spirit guides' that Alison finds herself with are villains rather that Native American medicine men. And while the bleakness is played up in the novel, it has to be said that Alison's trivial, meandering conversations with the dead, and the gloomy, bitchy world of the psychic fair circuit she inhabits, all ring very true. Colette is convincingly brass necked, and Alison's attempts to deal with the remnants of her past leave you sympathising desperately with her, and very glad not to have to deal with it yourself.

It's not a book encourage anyone to develop their mediumship - and as such should perhaps be read alongside the Doris Stokes types who give the impression that it's all love and sharing. There are elements of truth in both views, but neither gives you the whole picture. Both, however, can remind you why it's a good idea to get proper training if you're going to take the mediumship route - so that you can control who has access to your head.....

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