Beyond Black: A Novel [Paperback]

ANew York TimesNotable 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.

Hilary Mantel is the bestselling author of many novels includingWolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She is also the author ofA Change of Climate,A Place of Greater Safety,Eight Months on Ghazzah Street,An Experiment in Love,The Giant, O'Brien,Fludd,Beyond Black,Every Day Is Mother's Day, andVacant Possession. She has also written a memoir,Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared inThe New York Times,The New York Review of Books, and theLondon Review of Books. She lives in England with her husband.

Discussion Questions
1.Beyond Blackis set in contemporary England, a world of internet, suburbs, and commuting. Why do you think Hilary Mantel chose this period in time? How would the novel be different had she set it in a different time period? What does Mantel seem to be saying about contemporary English life?
2. Describe Alison's relationship with Colette. What do the characters offer one another? How does their relationship changelS.