Mrs Death Misses Death

Mrs Death Misses Death is the first novel by British poet and author, Salena Godden. Young poet Wolf Willeford‘s first encounter with Death was when he was just nine, their block of flats burned down and Death took his mum. Ten years later, on a hung-over walk home from a party on Christmas Eve, he spots a desk in a junk shop about to close down. He immediately knows he has to have it. And then he feels a cool presence nearby. Soon: “I am walking with Mrs Death and she shows me a London of layered worlds, the many worlds of before, and I hear the cries of far away and long ago. It is all here; I am both in the present and in the past. Mrs Death is vivid and by my side, narrating my world.” Death, it turns out, is not the hooded male figure with scythe, but an old, homeless black woman who frequents train stations and other places of arrival and departure, places of transit. The desk, when he has it in his attic room above the Forest Tavern in East London, turns out to be Mrs Death’s own, and it shares her many tales with him, the circumstances of some, the reader may recognise. Amongst other tales, there’s an interesting take on the story of a certain notorious nineteenth-century serial killer. “Oh, I have been travelling. I time travel. I am a death tourist. I am witness. I am permitted. I can see every end, I go everywhere that Mrs Death goes and the places only Mrs Death can go when I am here and when I listen to The Desk.” Godden utilises multiple formats: straight narratives from the perspective of Mrs Death, Wolf and The Desk, transcripts of interviews and counselling sessions with Mrs Death, poetry and free verse, flashbacks into Wolf’s unloved years with a cruel grandfather and a careless grandmother. It is filled with observations on human behaviour, philosophy, and anecdotes about death. The title is, of course, quirky; the premise is imaginative; and it all starts off witty and dark and quite clever. While Godden’s writing is often beautiful, if repetitive, the whole soon degenerates into a sort of stream of consciousness rant/lament about the state of the world. By the time Wolf reveals “But what if this passion and fury and all this writing were always just the ramblings of an imbalanced mind? What if everything I ever wrote and created was just my mania talking? What is real and what are just feelings? And which are real feelings or just hormones or chemicals in your body?” readers might well be skimming… Rather than a novel, this seems to be a showcase for the author’s writing skills, lots of poetic but somewhat disjointed prose and occasional bits of wordplay, but what passes for a plot peters out and lacks resolution. Disappointing. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Canongate

Saleena Godden, a poet, has written a wonderful poetic book about Mrs Death. As with Mother Nature, Gaia, it is unsurprising that life should be given by a woman and it should also not surprise us that Death is also a woman, after all women are designated caregivers literally from cradle to grave, so begone Grim Reaper! Wolf first meets Mrs Death when he is very young and his mother, along with many others, is killed in a fire, whilst he survives. He meets her again as an adult, when she is tired, fed up and needs someone to unburden herself to. Wolf, a writer, becomes, first of all a willing ear and then her scribe. An excellent novel, very individual and beautifully written. Very highly recommended.