Review: 'Mrs. Death Misses Death' by Salena Godden

For a few months Mrs. Death Misses Death was that book, the book you saw praised everywhere, the book everyone was recommending. This time I managed to not wait a year before I dug into it and I am here to tell you that the hype is correct. Mrs Death Misses Death is a brilliant book. Thanks to Canongate and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 28/01/2021
Publisher: Canongate

Mrs Death tells her intoxicating story in this life-affirming fire-starter of a novel

Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted from spending eternity doing her job and now she seeks someone to unburden her conscience to. Wolf Willeford, a troubled young writer, is well acquainted with death, but until now hadn’t met Death in person – a black, working-class woman who shape-shifts and does her work unseen.

Enthralled by her stories, Wolf becomes Mrs Death’s scribe, and begins to write her memoirs. Using their desk as a vessel and conduit, Wolf travels across time and place with Mrs Death to witness deaths of past and present and discuss what the future holds for humanity. As the two reflect on the losses they have experienced – or, in the case of Mrs Death, facilitated – their friendship grows into a surprising affirmation of hope, resilience and love. All the while, despite her world-weariness, Death must continue to hold humans’ fates in her hands, appearing in our lives when we least expect her . . .

Sometimes a book needs its first thirty or forty pages to really get started and pull you in but that was not the case with Godden's novel. From its introduction, full of warnings and jokes and serious asides about the inevitable nature of death, you will be completely gripped. Mrs Death Misses Death has the feel of a collage, of memories, utterances, glances and stories mixed together to present the complicated portrait of death. We see grief, longing, love, hate, redemption, forgiveness, every aspect of the process of dying and witnessing death. Death is a difficult thing to write about. In my own circle of friends there are people like myself, who have seen death and hope to one day welcome it like an old friend. But I also have friends who can't face it, for whom the reminder of mortality and a final end is too much to contemplate. I would think Salena Godden's novel will feel like a balm to both groups. Mrs. Death is there, unseen, invisible, but always present. Death weeps over the dead as much as the living do, but she will take you regardless. This is a heavy topic and yet Godden's novel feels light and life-affirming. There is darkness and sadness, yes, but there is also beauty and light. Although Mrs Death Misses Death might not relieve anyone of their fear of death, it might introduce it anew as a less frightening, but equally final, companion to life.

Wolf Willeford knows death. (Throughout the novel Wolf is gender neutral, so I will be referring to them as 'they'.) Their father left a long time ago and their mother died in a tragic fire, which strongly echoes the devastating Grenfell fire of 2017. They are haunted by these deaths and as a result find themselves lost. Until one day he finds an old writing desk and connects with Mrs. Death. Dedicated to writing her story, Wolf transcribes his conversations with her, her conversations with her therapist, the stories of the people she has known and taken, poems and songs, snippets of memory. Intertwined with Mrs. Death's story is Wolf's own, deeply marked by death and the battle between a desire to die and a will to live. Godden's Mrs. Death is one of the overlooked and silenced, one of the forgotten who live on the sidelines of the world's narrative. She is a Black woman, sometimes a shimmering Nina Simone, but often a poor beggar. She is overworked and never thanked. In her stories we encounter our own feelings of horror and numbness and the endless tragedies and deaths that play out across the world. At one point she laments she has never been this busy and asks us what we think we're doing. Written before the COVID-19 pandemic, Mrs. Death Misses Death is an eerily prescient look at death and our contrasting fear and neglect of it. 

Salena Godden is a poet and this is her first novel. As a poet, her writing is melodic and hypnotizing. She pinpoints our anxieties and gives them shape, putting words to emotions in a way that is both wry and comforting. Wolf is a difficult main character in that they are torn and angry and sad, but Godden brings out the light inside them, allowing Wold to be both morose and witty, scared and brave, lost but searching. Their writing becomes their way of making sense of themselves and Death, of a cruel world. The writing is full of allegories and metaphors, another mark of Godden's poetical instincts. There is always more to get from this novel and I found myself highlighting passages and messaging friends about them. There is a lot of meaning in these pages and Mrs Death Misses Death will be worth re-reading. The jump from stories to interviews to poems to songs and back may not seem like your cup of tea, but in this case it is worth to give it a try nonetheless. Each shift in "medium" presents a step forward, a new way of looking at something, a new burst of joy or a renewed look into the abyss. They all come together to create this beautifully contrasting novel that I can't quite encompass in words. Surely a novel about death can't be this light and life-affirming? Surely a novel this light can't address our 21st century anxieties so sharply and precisely? It seems Salena Godden can and I am so very grateful.

I give this novel...

5 Universes!

Mrs Death Misses Death is a beautiful book about death, about the overlooked tragedies, about the cruelty of the everyday, about the beauty of connection, about the joy of life because of death. It is a perfect book for these times.