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We’ve also published an extract from the beginning of the book to whet your appetite, and have compiled a detailed reading guide, with insights into the novel from critics and Mantel herself, as well as a series of discussion points for book clubs. If you’d like to know more about the book, you can read John Self’s full article here. ‘After all,’ he writes, ‘the role of the medium and the writer are not so dissimilar, pulling people real and imagined out of the air, reanimating the historical dead as Mantel did so brilliantly in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy.’ What’s more, as John Self points out in this exclusive essay for the Booker Prizes website, it is arguably Mantel’s most autobiographical novel. At the same time, she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who become nastier the more she resists…ĭescribed by Philip Pullman as ‘one of the greatest ghost stories in the language’, Beyond Black is also ‘a darkly humorous take on the enduring effects of childhood trauma’ ( Mslexia ) and ‘an intricately structured portrait of the secret dreads and desires of Middle England’ ( Telegraph ). But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the afterlife holds, but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. A masterpiece of dark humour, and arguably Mantel’s most personal work of fiction, it was the first of her books to be longlisted for the Booker, back in 2005.Īlison Hart, a medium, tours the outskirts of London with her cynical sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead relatives to a paying audience.

That’s why our April Book of the Month is Mantel’s Beyond Black, a comically sinister tale of wicked spirits and suburban mediums. But while she remains best known for her vividly drawn historical fiction, her other work should not be overlooked. In 2012, Hilary Mantel became one of only a handful of authors to win the Booker Prize twice – for the second part of her Wolf Hall trilogy, Bring Up the Bodies.

Beyond black mantel