Beyond black
By: Hilary Mantel
Publisher: Windsor
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Bath
Language: eng
Number of pages: 509
ISBN-13: 9781405613620; 9781405613637
Subjects: Mediums; Fiction; Female friendship; Divorced women; Women mediums; Spiritualists
Description: Alison Hart is a medium by trade: dead people talk to her, and she talks back. With her flat-eyed, flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, she tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital road, passing on messages from dead ancestors: 'Granny says she likes your new kitchen units.' Alison's ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift. Behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman. She knows that the next life holds terrors that she must conceal from her clients. Her days and nights are haunted by the men she knew in her childhood, the thugs and petty criminals who preyed upon her hopeless, addled mother, Emmie. They infiltrate her house, her body and her soul; the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become.
Notes: Originally published: London: Fourth Estate, 2005.