Beyond Black, Introduction EDP SUNDAY, 11th Marck, 2006

EDP Book Club

Beyond Black, Introduction EDP SUNDAY, 11th Marck, 2006

Jeff Taylor 07/04/2006, 9:55 AM

The East Anglian theme for the EDP Book Club was mainly inspired by my reading Literary Norfolk an absorbing account of the writers and writings of Norfolk. by Julian Earwaker and Kathleen Becker. Quite a section in the book is devoted to the University of East Anglia and in particular the Creative Writing MA course which was set up at UEA by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson in 1970. There is a long list of high-profile graduates of the course including Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel the author of this month’s EDP Book Club Choice ‘Beyond Black’.

Hilary Mantel was born in Glossop in Derbyshire in 1952 and studied Law at the LSE and at Sheffield and lived in Botswana and Saudi Arabia before returning to Britain in the mid 1980s. Her novels include Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988) set in Jeddah, Fludd (1989) set in a mill village in the north of England which won the Winifred Holtby Award among others and a Change of Climate (1994) which is the story of a couple living happily in the Norfolk countryside until ‘in the course of one summer their peace is almost destroyed, as echoes of their early career in Africa comes to haunt them.’

Beyond Black is her latest book, first published last year, and tells the story of Alison, a psychic travelling the Home Counties with her assistant, Colette. The Author Helen Dunmore has written ‘It’s a very funny book but it’s also a very dreadful book in the most literal sense of the word.’ While Harper Collins, the publisher of Beyond Black has commented that it is a ‘deeply sinister story of dark secrets and dark forces, set in an England that jumps at its own shadow, a country whose banal self-absorption is shot through by fear of the engulfing dark.’ I bought a copy at the beginning of this week and have so far only had time to read the first couple of chapters but I’m already beginning to feel both unsettled and fascinated.

Re: Beyond Black, Introduction EDP SUNDAY, 11th March, 2006

Liz English 10/04/2006, 1:06 PM

I was looking forward to reading Beyond Black having heard so many good things about it but it was a real struggle right from the beginning and it didn’t help when I realized, 250 pages in, that I had another 200 to go! I persisted but I must admit I skip read much of the last 200 pages – from the start of the new millennium in fact.

I think I just wasn’t in the mood to read a book which was essentially about child abuse. I find it difficult to come to terms with the idea that some people can behave in such an awful way and how that behaviour can have such a disturbing effect on peoples lives. Hilary Mantel’s description of Alison Hart’s childhood by not going into great detail about the abuse left almost too much to my imagination. I was reminded of the images that even small details released during the Moors Murders’ investigation conjured up. I think I read the book in a grainy black and white. There was no colour in there.

I also don’t want to believe that England is so boringly awful, so bland, so unimaginative, so unhappy and occasionally so violent and horrific. The problem is I think Hilary Mantel has hit the nail on the head. I also don’t want to believe that people get so little out of their lives that they might as well be dead and that when they are dead they might not be any different. That is really scary.

I’m sure I would have got more from the novel if it hadn’t made me so depressed. Maybe it worked it’s magic too well. I did however find the psychic malarkey quite interesting and am determined one day to ‘take-in’ a show even though I don’t believe a word of it.

Liz English