Beyond Black

Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black is a surprising and darkly humorous psychological thriller about a suburban woman confronting a very terrible past. “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.” This is another book that seems to me far superior to her more famous Wolf Hall-era historical fiction. And as always, Mantel writes exquisite sentences: “There’s a lot of sadness in hotel rooms, soaked up by the soft furnishings: a lot of loneliness and guilt and regret.”