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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Didn't get it, May 14, 2005
I'm a big Mantel fan. I loved "An Experiment in Love," "Fludd," and "A Change of Climate." Mantel's gorgeous prose style even carried me most of the way through "A Place of Greater Safety--" her gigantic novel about the French revolution. And so of course I rushed out to buy "Beyond Black" as soon as I saw it reviewed.
As a novelist, Mantel has never been one to tip her hand. She keeps us guessing, for example about the true identity of the title character in "Fludd," and we never know how the protaganist of "An Experiment in Love" gets over her anorexia. When it comes to characterization Mantel shows rather than tells; she relies on evocative imagery, rather than on psychobabble, to shed light on the motivation of her characters. As Margaret Atwood says in her review of "An Experiment in Love," it is "what you don't know" that haunts you after you've finished one of Mantel's novels.
But I think that Mantel goes too far off in this direction in "Beyond Black." She simply doesn't tell the reader enough to make the story hang together. Her background characters-- Alison's psychic colleagues, Colette's ex-husband, even the spectral Morris-- are caricatures. And the two protagonists are incomprehensible. We never really understand what draws Colette to the "psychic business" in the first place, given that she spends most of the novel being so skeptical. And we never really understand what it's like to be Allison, to have the dead tormenting you all the time. The flashbacks to Allison's past are ghastly and beautiful, but the "present tense" narrative is mostly taken up by innane dialogue that never seems to go anywhere.
Both of the reviews I read of this book-- in the New York Times and the Washington Post-- are very favorable, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Did anybody see anything in this novel that I didn't?
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
From the banal to the mundane - a quick overview of today's spiritualists, February 19, 2007
This review is from: Beyond Black: A Novel (Paperback)
Well, I must say, after laughing my way through Mary Roach's wonderful "Spook," a non-fiction expose of early 20th century spiritualism, I was ready to give Hilary Mantel a try. I was certainly not disappointed. Mary Roach had me in stitches over cheesecloth nasal packing presenting itself as "ectoplasm." Mantel, on the other hand, gave me a spiritualist one could love, an overweight, insecure and tender-hearted medium who puts up with both worldly and supernatural nastiness until her own good deed frees her.
A recent New Yorker article on Mantel gave me the idea that she might have something to tell me, and I was happily right. I was already prepared for the eerie and inexplicable; Mary Roach, however, prepared me for
mediums fortified with cooking sherry and booking rooms in pubs and bowling alleys. As I was completely new to Mantel, I found myself immersed in her unique mix of humor and ugliness. I was just delighted when a grey sock turned up in Colette's dryer (a very ominous sign), and when Al found her new spirit guides to be two little old ladies who required padded drawers on outings.
I'll read Mantel again, that's a certainty. In the meantime, it's four stars for "Beyond Black"...and an unconditional plug for Mary Roach's "Spook," while we're at it!
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Giving up the ghost., May 13, 2006
This review is from: Beyond Black: A Novel (Paperback)
Like other reviewers, I wanted to give this book more than three stars. Mantel is a writer whom I very much admire and the idea of this book seized my imagination before I even started to read.
The book opens wonderfully, and I was fully engaged within a few pages. The characters are well-drawn. While not sympathetic, Allison and Colette are very real. Mantel engages her trademark blend of sympathy and savagery while describing these women and their damaged lives.
The real struggle with the book comes midway through the story. As though she painted herself into a corner, the trope of revelation through the conversations with Morris falls flat and becomes repetitive. I got and even respect the parody of the "troubled childhood gradually revealing itself" that Mantel uses. It's very funny, and the humor resonates with the real grief of broken lives. This said, the joke goes on for far too long, and by the end of the book I was simply glad that it was over. 100 pages less would have done a lot to tighten the book and correct most of the problems that I had with the build up of the story.
There are some truly brilliant bits sprinkled throughout the book. Humor and pathos and the claustrophobia of life around the highways are the gems of the novel. I wish that they could have been more consistent, or more densely placed.
Fans of Mantel should read it. Be aware that it is not her best work. Particularly given the glowing reviews, it is a bit of a disappointment. Probably obvious if you know anything about Mantel as a writer, but this isn't a novel suitable for younger readers. Much of the material is extremely disturbing and often quite graphic.
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