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Mrs. Death Misses Death is a magnificently macabre telling of one person’s relationship with Death. The author, Salena Godden brings Death to life as the most easily ‘talked over, ignored, betrayed and easy to walk past’ black woman. Mrs. Death Misses Death is written in a form of prose poetry which is perhaps come natural for poet Salena Godden and indeed some chapters are just poems from the main characters. This inclusion of poetry in the writing brings greater imagery and invokes strong emotions with its rhythmic sentences and wordplay, and creates intensity through its use of repetition.
The book focuses on the theme of (you guessed it) death and the grief and trauma that comes with losing loved ones and how this can affect mental health in the long term. I also found that the book deals with racist, classist and gender inequality, stereotypes and discrimination that might colour the way we view the deaths of some people.
This entertainingly eerie story is told from the point of view of the two main characters, Mrs. Death (of course) and her chosen companion Wolf Willeford. Wolf is a young adult and aspiring writer living in east London of Jamaican parentage, who is referred to by gender non specific terms. They lost their mother at a young age to a fire that burned down their apartment building and have been struggling with the trauma and grief ever since. It is this early encounter with death that sets the tone for Wolf’s life and leads to their mental health issues. They state that ‘she (Mrs. Death) followed me wherever I went. From that day of the fire onwards, Mrs Death was there in the background…I felt her beside me, like a sudden urge to step out in front of a speeding train, to die was a temptation, a desire, a compulsion’. Wolf has had a hard time coping with their mental health issues and throughout the book we see them going through a series of episodes ranging in severity. It is clear that Mrs. Death was created by Wolf as a means of voicing the chaos in their mind.
Wolf buys a desk in hopes of writing a novel and it is here that Mrs. Death reveals herself to them and Wolf begins to record Mrs. Death’s tales of death. She tells them of gruesome murders in history, unsolved murders, female serial killers and her role in the cycle of life. Mrs. Death and Wolf have something in common, they have both been affected by the deaths they witnessed and they both seek professional help to cope (yes, even Mrs. Death needs therapy).
The author didn’t seem very committed to a plot throughout the book, at times she just vaguely moved the story along with hints as to what might be happening and quickly got back to the shared existential crises taking place between Wolf and Mrs. Death. More than anything Mrs. Death Misses Deathfeels like the rationalization and coming to terms with the fact that all living things die and that death itself is neither good nor bad but necessary. We will grieve for those who passed away but we should also believe that there is a release and relief in death. Mrs. Death says to us ‘ You will all go away one day, and what a relief.’ and this should encourage us to live as fully as we can today, because she would rather take us ‘when you are busy doing something you want to live for…when you are doing something you would die for.’
So, let us all take Mrs. Death’s advice and ‘…take today and blow its mind; take this today and suck it dry. Take today and fill it with the best of you. Take today and down it in one, take today like a shot of petrol and set your day alight. Take today and fuck it like the last fuck in Pompeii as burning lava covers your home… Fuck it. Once and for all. Fuck it tenderly and tell it you love it, fuck it and hold it, fuck it and look it in the eye, tell it you love it, but then fucking let it go.”
Content Warning for Mrs Death Misses Death: grief, mental health disorders, suicide, death, sexual assault.
About Dave-Ann Moses
I love to read, I love buying books and I love crafting, I’ve found a way to combine these loves through my social media @oddgyalreads (IG and Twitter) where I incorporate my crafts into my book posts and on my blog oddgyalreads.wordpress.com where I write reviews of my reads.
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