One of Hilary Mantel’s lesser known books, ‘Beyond Black’ was recommended on the ‘Backlisted’ podcast. Set in the seven years after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the book details the decline of spiritualist Alison and her assistant Colette after their move to the London suburbs. This is a story of inexorable decay. Colette takes over Alison’s life and business, packaging her talents as if she were a commodity, and also alienating her from her community of fellow “Sensitives.” Alison goes along with the plans, hoping Colette can bring some order to her life and help her shed the baggage of her nightmarish childhood, still haunting her in the form of her spirit guide, Morris, a detestable client of her mother’s whorehouse. The book explores the shadowy borderlands between memory and imagination, between life and death, between city and country; Mantel is really at her best evoking the miserable world we create when we are jammed up against each other in the suburbs, without the happy distractions the city provides. Stuck in a new build in the middle of a field seething with white worms, rats, irradiated soil, and nosy neighbors, Alison becomes more and more dependent on Colette, even as her manager grows more controlling and vicious. Alison does manage to regain some autonomy by putting her spirit guides in their place in this world and in memory, “doing good acts,” and rejoining her community of spiritualists. But it is a hard-won victory that may not have left her much time.