Laughing in the dark

With Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel became a literary superstar but Beyond Black, written when she was still a ‘hidden gem’, is equally enchanting.

When Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall came out in 2009, readers pounced on the latest retelling of the Henry VIII saga with visceral pleasure. With that novel, Mantel became a literary superstar and not just because she had taken what was always going to be a popular subject for historical fiction — those scandal-ridden Tudors — but also because of the way she told the story. It was not just getting the point-of-view of Henry’s consigliere, one of English history’s great villains Thomas Cromwell, but you actually felt, while reading the book, that you were inside Cromwell’s head.

At the time what struck me the most in the commentary inspired by Wolf Hall’s commercial and Booker success was how Mantel’s long-term fans wished she’d remained a hidden gem of English literature. Nobody begrudged the superstardom that had come to her in middle age, but there were those who’d read her works loyally and felt fiercely protective of both the writer and her works.

I thought of those readers and the grief and loss they must have felt most acutely when the news came through last month that Mantel had passed at the age of 70. Like Alison, her large-bodied psychic in Beyond Black, I find that saying she ‘died’ doesn’t quite sit right — passing is the correct verb to use here. Alison refers to herself and her coterie of women mediums as ‘sensitives’ in this novel set in and around the drab towns of Middle England in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They ply their trade in small halls where crowds gather to try and find resolutions to what has been ailing them psychically.

Is Alison a sham? From the start, Mantel makes it clear in Beyond Black that no, Alison is the real deal. There are spirits around her— the ghosts crowding her life are not a sign of madness or hysteria. For Alison and the other psychics, there are two distinct worlds: earthside where they exercise their gifts and airside where their spirit guides pass on messages from the dead.

When the novel starts, Alison is preparing for an evening where she will communicate these messages to various members of the audience through a mixture of clever guesswork and an acute understanding of human psychology. Helping her is not just her assistant Colette but also a spirit guide, Morris, a foul-mouthed little man whose company is her special cross to bear. As the story progresses, and Mantel carefully and slyly reveals Morris’ connection to Alison, the true themes of the novel emerge: memory, childhood trauma, and the pain inflicted on and caused by women’s bodies to their souls.

Colette, before she met Alison, was a mid-level corporate executive in a loveless marriage. She walks out on her husband Gavin one day convinced that she’d spoken on the phone with her dead mother-in-law. In a turn of events that’s both darkly comical and horrifying, and spurred by this brief connection to the other side, Colette seeks out psychics and mediums and eventually, her path crosses with Alison’s. Their partnership grows into an uneasy co-dependent relationship where the scales of power tip one way and then the other. Money is made and managed and invested in property. Corruption inevitably sets in, both moral and corporeal, and Mantel’s magic seduces the reader into inhibiting this sad, funny world.

Beyond Black is the book that most of Mantel’s pre-Wolf Hall readership used as evidence of her uncommon gift of keen observation that mined the strange and the laugh-out-loud funny details of mundane lives. It’s sad to think of what literature has lost with Mantel’s passing, but what she did create and leave behind are gifts unparalleled.

The author is a writer and communications professional. When she’s not reading, writing or watching cat videos, she can be found on Instagram @saudha_k where she posts about reading, writing, and cats.

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