Kathleen Jones reviewed My Memories of a Future Life on her reading blog this week. One of the comparisons she made was with Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black, which explores the murky world of charlatan psychic healers who prey on the weak and vulnerable.

When I was kicking around ideas for MMOAFL, I did a lot of research into that world. A stand-out was going to a show where a spiritualist claimed to be contacting the dead relatives of people in the audience – but was obviously grasping ideas out of thin air and finding vulnerable people who would play along. Beyond Black was on my reading list, but somehow I never got round to it – perhaps I’d seen so much charlatanry in reality that I didn’t need to read fiction about it too. So Beyond Black descended further and further down my Amazon wish list, until here it is mentioned in Kathleen’s review … It has to be a sign…