Book review: “Beyond Black,” by Hilary Mantel

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I first heard of Beyond Black while enjoying the Guardian’s list of author-picked best books of 2005. That’s where this year’s Man Booker Prize–winner John Banville gushed that Beyond Black author Hilary Mantel should have joined him on the shortlist for his award. It’s where A.S. Byatt lauded Mantel’s prose and proclaimed her novel to be “indeed beyond black, a terrible and swirling horror-comedy….” And it’s where Philip Pullman—my favorite discovery of 2005—raved about Beyond Black, summarizing it as “a chilling masterpiece.”

It’s hard to beat such praise, so I was hooked.

I finished Beyond Black last night, just before my clock struck midnight. Was I terrified as I turned the last page at that witching hour? Shaken by heebie-jeebies? Creeped out, at least? I’m sorry to report that the answers are no, nope, and not really. But was I intrigued? Absolutely.

Fortunately, I didn’t read this novel in search of frights. Chills and jitters would have been thrilling, but I mainly wanted to be compelled by an interesting story and to be rewarded with remarkable writing. (Yes, I sometimes read for the writing.) In that regard, Mantel was quite successful.

Beyond Black is the story of Alison, a rotund medium who lives with her assistant in an English tract house, where she’s haunted by her childhood and tormented by the spirits of people she knew then. Alison hires Colette as a way to build her psychic business and to better cope with the exhaustion of being bombarded by metaphysical “fiends” each day.

For me, reading this novel was an experiment in clairvoyance—almost like discerning the tarot, peering through a veil, or deciphering a vision. The events and characters are filtered; they’re not quite solid. Mantel’s writing imbues the experience with a sense of being not-quite-odd, not-quite-real. It’s not entirely strange that Morris, Alison’s spirit guide, is a louse, a lush, and a lech. But one also senses that there’s another (darker? wiser?) dimension to him. The result is that the reader hovers in greyness for much of the story, unsure of how much they know or how much to trust. Naturally, this is intentional and gives the reader a strong sense of what it’s like to live among the dead.

Mantel doesn’t divulge her story in easy, crisp revelations. Instead, she swirls mysterious vignettes and seemingly commonplace scenes around the reader. One day, Colette and Alison mount the humdrum, drawn-out quest of procuring a shed for their very-suburban backyard; before long, however, Alison’s spirit fiends use the shed for murderous means.

The slow, ethereal build-up got on my nerves at times: sometimes I just wanted something to happen. But the subtlety kept me switched on and interested long enough for some dynamic concerning the characters or the premise to materialize further and take me closer to what eventually was a solid-yet-strange-yet-satisfying ending.