Holly's Reviews > Beyond Black

This is the first Mantel I've read since the late 1990s when I discovered Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, A Change of Climate, and An Experiment in Love. (I'll get to the Wolf Hall-business at some point.) Here we have two eccentric English ladies (and a foul-mouthed dwarf spook), and sometimes the relationship between the women reminded me of a marriage. For example this exchange, when one character retracts a suggestion she's made to the other, since the other keeps insisting she can't take it on:

I take it back.
That's not the point. I have to tell you why [I can't do it]. You have to know.
I don't have to.
You do. Or you'll keep coming back to it again and again.
I won't. I'll never mention it.
You will, You're that type, Colette, you can't help mentioning and mentioning things. I'm not getting at you. I'm not criticizing. But you do mention, you are -- Colette, you are, one of the world's great mentioners.

Despite the hilarious "why do they they think we're lesbians!" refrain and the witty, droll commentaries on contemporary England, television, suburbia, the death of Princess Diana, psychic fayres (two rival male psychics are named "Merlin" and "Merlyn," of course), there is tragedy and unspeakable pain at the heart of this story. I say "unspeakable" because Mantel writes herself and the reader right up to the edge of the appalling -- to go further would have unbalanced the novel and been disrespectful to those who have suffered child abuse. (This is not a pornography of violence.)

At some point on your road you have to turn and start walking back towards yourself. Or the past will pursue you, and bite the nape of your neck, leave you bleeding in the ditch. Better to turn and face it with such weapons as you possess.