Laurel and Hardy. Patsy and Edina. And now Alison and Colette, of Hilary Mantel's bitterly hilarious novel Beyond Black. Alison is a mild-mannered, overweight clairvoyant, or medium, or some kind of person who can be in touch with the Spirit World and has thus made that her vocation, never mind how tacky it is. Colette is a literal-minded, grimly upwardly-mobile divorcée who takes over Alison's business affairs. This very odd couple's misadventures take place in a meticulously described world of post-modern, past-caring British wasteland (so many lettered-numbered motorways through so many ugly landscapes; so many "industrial parks, car parks, shopping parks"). Mantel gives us everything, including poor Alison's gradually revealed, unbelievably nightmarish past, in such a bemusedly blunt, offhand, not entirely unsympathetic manner that, though there are several reasonable interpretations of the title, my preferred take on it is that there's "black" comedy, and then there's something--well exemplified by Mantel's novel--that's such a deep-down mixture of despair and mordantly giggling fortitude that it's BEYOND black.