Paulclem
05-01-2010, 03:41 AM
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
When Hilary Mantel won the booker prize with Wolf Hall, I decided to wait for the paperback and looked for another to see what her work was like. So I was very surprised to come across Beyond Black which is a novel with an unusual subject.
If Graham Greene wrote the Catholic novel with The Heart of the Matter, then Hilary mantel has written the Spiritualist’s novel. God is a character in Greene’s novel, and the Catholic worldview the accepted perspective, so Mantel’s book assumes the reality of the spirit world and its often gruesome interaction with “reality”. In fact throughout the book, “reality” is constantly being interspersed with spirit communication, dreams, memory, and the effect of spirits upon the living. Seeing the world from Alison’s view, we are party to a world where superstition and the awareness of spirits seem to take us back to a less materialistic time. This contrasts with Colette's materialistic perspective which, being psychic, Alison is also party to.
The book is set in the south of England and portrays a medium – Alison - who is troubled by the fiendish male spirits of her deprived and abused childhood. She takes on an assistant – Colette –who attempts to improve Alison’s “business”, but her staid and unbelieving attitude mean that they never work comfortably together.
The book charts the revelations of Alison’s horrible childhood, and the realisations and revelations that enable her to free herself from the past. It is done with a black humour which means there is never a descent into moralising or sentimentality, and we see Alison as a positive character who becomes happier with herself.
The world of commercial Spiritualism is portrayed with a sense of authenticity, which fairly examines the showmanship, fraud and talent within their circles. We also get a bleached view of the motorways, “A” roads and circulars that are the domain of the southern commercial traveller. It is a road novel of the middle class Spiritualist taking their temporal and spiritual journey through southern England.
When Hilary Mantel won the booker prize with Wolf Hall, I decided to wait for the paperback and looked for another to see what her work was like. So I was very surprised to come across Beyond Black which is a novel with an unusual subject.
If Graham Greene wrote the Catholic novel with The Heart of the Matter, then Hilary mantel has written the Spiritualist’s novel. God is a character in Greene’s novel, and the Catholic worldview the accepted perspective, so Mantel’s book assumes the reality of the spirit world and its often gruesome interaction with “reality”. In fact throughout the book, “reality” is constantly being interspersed with spirit communication, dreams, memory, and the effect of spirits upon the living. Seeing the world from Alison’s view, we are party to a world where superstition and the awareness of spirits seem to take us back to a less materialistic time. This contrasts with Colette's materialistic perspective which, being psychic, Alison is also party to.
The book is set in the south of England and portrays a medium – Alison - who is troubled by the fiendish male spirits of her deprived and abused childhood. She takes on an assistant – Colette –who attempts to improve Alison’s “business”, but her staid and unbelieving attitude mean that they never work comfortably together.
The book charts the revelations of Alison’s horrible childhood, and the realisations and revelations that enable her to free herself from the past. It is done with a black humour which means there is never a descent into moralising or sentimentality, and we see Alison as a positive character who becomes happier with herself.
The world of commercial Spiritualism is portrayed with a sense of authenticity, which fairly examines the showmanship, fraud and talent within their circles. We also get a bleached view of the motorways, “A” roads and circulars that are the domain of the southern commercial traveller. It is a road novel of the middle class Spiritualist taking their temporal and spiritual journey through southern England.