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Beyond Black
A Novel
by Hilary Mantel
Mantel injects her usual dark humor into this look at the mundane, quotidian world of ordinary working folk--well, ordinary working clairvoyants, that is.
Henry Holt and Co., 384 pages
05/09/2005
$26.00
ISBN: 0805073566
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Kirkus Reviews
Superbly odd, but still superb.
London Review Of Books Elizabeth Lowry
Beyond Black is, magnificently, a book of stresses and counter-stresses, establishing riveting oppositions between spirit and body, fear and love, despair and hope, male and female, self-denial and self-indulgence. And, of course, evil and good, damnation and redemption.
The Independent Jill Dawson
Laceratingly observant, a masterpiece of wit, heavy with atmosphere. It is also glorious, insolent and slyly funny: full of robust, uncluttered prose and searing moments.
The New York Times Book Review Terrence Rafferty
This is, I think, a great comic novel. Hilary Mantel's humor, like Flannery O'Connor's, is so far beyond black it becomes a kind of light.
The New Yorker Joan Acocella
Mantel's writing is so exact and brilliant that, in itself, it seems an act of survival, even redemption.
Washington Post Meg Wolitzer
A daring and extravagant book, filled with as much wit as darkness. Sometimes, wit can't really replace light, and I found myself longing once in a while for the novel to take a sudden sharp turn and leave the paranormal and the traumatic far, far behind. I never got my wish, of course, which is probably just as well.
The Spectator D. J. Taylor
All this is done with a kind of amused savagery — always latent in Mantel’s earlier work, only now, it seems, allowed the space to luxuriate and develop — which relies for its sharpest effects on the thoroughly prosaic nature of her material.
The Independent Nicola Smyth
Black humour is Mantel's trademark, and, as its title acknowledges, she's at her bleakest here.
Publishers Weekly
This witty, matter-of-fact look at the psychic milieu reveals a supernatural world that can be as mundane as the world of carpet salesmen and shopkeepers.
San Francisco Chronicle Jesse Berrett
Floating two sets of narrative balls at once, Mantel masterfully spikes her sardonic take on contemporary supernaturalism with a raw cruelty that never needs updating.
The Guardian Fay Weldon
She's witty, ironic, intelligent and, I suspect, haunted. This is a book out of the unconscious, where the best novels come from.
Boston Globe Richard Eder
Almost disagreeably, almost against our will, we are sunk into an unremitting painfulness that is relieved -- but also intensified -- by jolts of outraged tenderness and outrageous exhilaration.
Daily Telegraph Ruth Scurr
It is Mantel's compassion for the ordinary people who live and die in such unlovely places that illuminates this dark book and creates its black lustre.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement M. John Harrison
Savage, startlingly subversive and raucously funny novel.
Library Journal Eleanor J. Bader
While readers unschooled in the wiles of psychic phenomenon will likely find parts of this novel tedious, Alison and her intrepid business partner, Colette, are so interestingly quirky that even when the novel veers into New Age babble it retains some appeal. [1 Apr 2005, p.87]
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Bernard Kelly
As good as all this is, less would have been even better. Beyond Black is never quite "of an unfeasible size," but it does sag noticeably in the middle.
New York Review Of Books John Banville
Beyond Black is a fine work, and from a lesser novelist would have seemed a masterpiece. It is too long -- Muriel Spark would have managed the same effect in a hundred or so crisp pages -- and despite the self-deprecating humor it shows too overtly its grand intentions.
Village Voice Rachel Aviv
The dead people in Mantel's latest are tacky and clueless and live in dusty parts of kitchens and bathrooms.
 The average user rating for this book is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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