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‘I want to be normal,’ she thinks. ‘I want to be normal for half an hour.’
The thoughts are those of Alison Hart, a psychic who spends her life touring England’s commuter belt, circling London’s outskirts – ‘Orpington, Sevenoaks, Chertsey, Runnymede’ – and parking up in provincial halls in a glittery cocktail dress to deliver messages from the dead to people looking for answers. Alison is the hero, in every sense, of Hilary Mantel’s 2005 novel beyond black, a story of suburban dullness offset by dark magic. It is funny, frightening and full of sadness.
Hilary Mantel has become a Booker legend, one of a select bunch of authors to win the prize twice, for Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012), two of her chronicles of Thomas Cromwell. The third volume, The Mirror and The Light, was longlisted in 2020. But before all these – and earning her her first longlisting – came Beyond Black.
