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| Beyond Black: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Hilary Mantel
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $14.99 (100%)
New (11) Used (28) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 183088
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0312426054
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780312426057
ASIN: 0312426054
Publication Date: April 18, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Colette and Alison are unlikely cohorts: one a shy, drab beanpole of an assistant, the other a charismatic, corpulent psychic whose connection to the spiritual world torments her. When they meet at a fair, Alison invites Colette at once to join her on the road as her personal assistant and companion. Troubles spiral out of control when the pair moves to a suburban wasteland in what was once the English countryside. It is not long before the place beyond black threatens to uproot their lives forever. This is Hilary Mantel at her finest--insightful, darkly comic, unorthodox, and thrilling to read.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Savage beauty October 20, 2008
This book is a beautifully crafted view into a place that few of us may ever choose to go. At least, I hope so for our sakes. It begins with a slow and friendly pace, touring us through its not always pleasant characters' lives. By the time it ends, I felt I had a stake in what happened and was genuinely concerned with whether Allison survived her traumatic visitations.
The best I can say is that it felt utterly true to me, which is saying a good deal. It is not, however, for the casual reader looking for a fun airplane read. I don't think that would be satisfying. The book demands time be spent with it, and I felt the time was well worth it, if at times a bit grueling.
 Beyond Ennui August 11, 2008
I wanted to like the book as it had a fascinating cover (the hardbound edition) and it seemed like an entoxicating plot. However, it was such work to finish the first three chapters that I started another book, which lead to five new ones. For a first-time Mantel read, I was underwhelmed at the prose in the book. It just didn't pull me in and the novel just seemed to drag. I tried to get through it again and still couldn't make it to the halfway point, so I just let it go. I didn't care about the characters and decided that when you get almost halfway and find yourself working to read a novel for pleasure, it's best to move on and find something you enjoy. Truly, a boring read...
Great book. Something to sink your teeth in May 5, 2008
Hilary Mantel returns with her first novel for six years. The highly acclaimed author, in her tenth novel, Beyond Black, follows her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Set in the suburban dormitory towns around London's orbital motorway, the new novel follows a medium who makes her living by passing on the messages of the dead. Great book. Something to sink your teeth in!!
 From the banal to the mundane - a quick overview of today's spiritualists February 20, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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!
 A very challenginging read February 11, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read Mantel`s "A Place of Greater Safety" a long time ago, and recall I found it a fabulous book. I remember it as a "conventional" historical novel, but one written with greater depth of characterization and tightness of plot than perhaps is usual. It suggested a very talented writer in the making
Beyond Black certainly showcases that talent. The book is incredibly well written and original. The prose is never beautiful, but it is biting in a way that befits the novel`s ambiance, setting and themes.
I think it was this recogntition or intuition that what I was reading was special that kept me reading the book, because it was challenging to get through it. It is certainly not easy to empathize with the two main characters, Collette and Allison, to the contrary. It is not easy to get interested in such an outlandish plot, and one so seemingly written by a woman for women. And it was not easy to follow Allison's dialogues with the her ghosts: it took some getting used to until I could figure out what was or wasn't real. And I was a bit disappointed in what I felt was a less decisive ending than I deserved for the all the "effort" I put in.
But despite all these challenges, I'm glad I finished the book and my respect for Mantel has grown. I just hope when I pick up another of her books it takes a bit less effort to enjoy the great talent
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