21. Beyond Black – Hilary Mantel
This came recommended by one of the 50-bookers at some point in the last few years; I found it to be an unusual, dark and bleak read.
Alison is an obese, middle aged medium offering private readings and public performances, accompanied by her icy assistant Colette and repulsive spirit guide Morris. Alison portrays the spirit world as a benign and eventless to the public, when it is anything but; she is tormented and abused by the spirits of the men from her past.
We learn how Alison grew up in a crumbling squat, her mother a tired out prostitute servicing a regular gang of vicious lowlifes. Shady criminal goings on happen at all hours and Alison begins to notice disassembled body parts around the building, and people only she can see.
Morris was one of these visitors before he passed over, he attracts the spirits of the other men, ‘the fiends’ who gather around Alison dragging her down. Dark references are made to some violent lesson taught to her by these men when she was a child, a memory she has deeply repressed.
Other reviews have linked Beyond Black to Mantel’s memoir Giving Up the Ghost in which she discusses her own family and peculiar upbringing. In particular, prior to her first holy communion aged seven, Mantel believed she encountered a malignant presence which entered into her. Beyond Black must in part, be an exploration of this early encounter and its lasting effect.
At times this felt very slow, and I often struggled to pick it up. Not much happens plot-wise, but the writing is beautiful and heavy with metaphor.