Beyond Black : Hilary Mantel

Struggling this week.  I know its only a few days post operation, but its awful being unable to do much at all.  So what is left? To forget about the untidy house and piles of 'must do' papers, and sit (or lay) down and give time over to a book.  I have had Beyond Black (2010) for a number of years. Not sure from where it came from or why, but I finally settled down to read it and was amazed at how it kept me from thinking of the dirt and papers piling up!
                                      
The Blurb: Alison Hart is a medium by trade: dead people talk to her, and she talks back. With her flat-eyed, flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, she tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital road, passing on messages from dead ancestors: 'Granny says she likes your new kitchen units.'  Alison's ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift. Behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman. She knows that the next life holds terrors that she must conceal from her clients. Her days and nights are haunted by the men she knew in her childhood, the thugs and petty criminals who preyed upon her hopeless, addled mother, Emmie. They infiltrate her house, her body and her soul; the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become.

This tenth novel by Hilary Mantel, the critically acclaimed author of Giving Up the Ghost, is a witty and 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 couldn't have said it better myself!  If you have any interest in mediumship or hauntings you will love this book - especially if you have a dark sense of humour!