I love Salena Godden and really enjoyed this book. Will come highly recommended from me like all of her work.

A poetic surreal journey through tradegies we will all recognise in the brooding company of Mrs Death.

I talk about Salena Godden’s Mrs Death, Misses Death in our Spring podcast but I wanted to mention it again, as like Light Perpetual, although dark and confronting at times, it reminds the reader of the fleeting nature of life and to ‘enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think’. This unusual, lyrical book is a debut novel from performance poet Godden, listen to our podcast to find out more.

Salena Godden's Mrs Death Misses Death is many things. Set against the backdrop of a tower block fire, it is the story of Wolf, a boy who is woken by his mother telling him that there's a fire and he should run. This is also the story of Mrs Death herself.

Wolf makes it; his mum doesn't. The book asks some important, perhaps impossible, questions: What happens if you survive that? What happens if your family don't? How do you deal with that, with where you're sent, with what happens next?

It seems for Wolf, he is destined to keep seeing Mrs Death. His relationship with her forms the basis of this story, as we discover more of his life between the fire and now, several years later. Through poetry and prose and repetition, we see Wolf's mind unfold. We become invested in the soliloquay, the songs, the sorrow. And, with Wolf, we begin to come out the other side.

This is a tale of death and life, of grief and trauma, of loss and mental illness.
It is an examination of the human condition: We see both the very ugly and the very beautiful, our contradictions and attitudes to time and people and life, how we don't know what we've got til it's gone. So seldom do we truly appreciate life and the living, but perhaps we are waking up. Perhaps humanity is starting to come out the other side.

It is a comment on sexism, racism, class divides, brutality, inequality and injustice.
It is a confusion, a raw sadness, but also a glimmer of hope. That chapter We Could Be Heroes is just... Fantastic. It's emotional,, uplifting, and oh so accurate, so relevant to today.

This book is many things. Every one of them is achingly beautiful and painfully astute. I cannot stop thinking about it. This should be read and read again, year after year, to glean even more from Godden's skill. What a novel. What a debut.

I loved the premise of this novel - Mrs. Death, a working class black woman, is looking for someone to unburden herself to after spending eternity facilitating death, causing death, thinking about death, and otherwise embodying death. She chooses Wolf Willeford, a young writer who she once rescued from a house fire, and who has recently purchased her desk, which acts as a conduit between them so that he is able to act as Mrs. Death's scribe.

While I loved the premise - and am a fan of Salena Godden's poetry - this novel was not my cup of tea. I enjoy a lot of experimental fiction, but I couldn't get a foothold on this book at all - it slipped and slithered, started out as one thing and then tried to be another, and felt completely random and scattershot. It was definitely not a plot driven book, so you had to enjoy the writing style to enjoy the book, and as I struggled with the former, I couldn't appreciate the latter. I do think this book will be like Marmite - some people will absolutely love it and others, like me, will just not be able to work with it. It's not that the writing is bad - Salena Godden is an excellent writer, and I wouldn't try to argue otherwise - it's just that it's very different, and it will either work for you or it won't.

Thank you to NetGalley, and to the publisher, who granted me a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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.

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.

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.

The premise of this novel is intriguing; the idea of Mrs Death unburdening herself to someone is an interesting and original idea that hooked me as the scope seemed endless. However though it’s very lyrical and stylised, with poetry interwoven with prose, the plot and execution just seemed to be all over the place and there was no real story to follow.

I’ve read other reviews saying it’s the perfect book for anyone who’s grieving, and that it’s life-affirming but I found it incredibly bleak. I kept thinking if I was reading this at a difficult time it would make me feel worse rather than better and, even on a good day, each listen left me feeling a little drained. The narrator is excellent but I just kept waiting for it to pick up and turn a more positive corner which never really happened.

The very end is somewhat more optimistic than the rest of the book but I still wouldn’t dream of describing this book as uplifting as others have done. That said I don’t know if that was even the author’s intention and perhaps that’s the main problem for me; I’m still unsure of how to take it, what the point of the book was or what the author was really going for here.

As writing goes it’s interesting, deep and vivid so Godden is definitely an author to be admired. It’s short and the concept is good so it’s not difficult to keep reading on, however I felt the story itself missed the mark. I really wanted to love it as it seemed to hold so much promise, and I held out hope until the very last chapter, but ultimately it’s not one I’ll be rereading sadly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate for my copy to read in exchange for an honest review.

Wolf Willeford is a troubled young writer who is well acquainted with death. Fascinated by Mrs Death’s stories, he becomes her scribe, using her old desk as a vessel to communicate with her and write her memoirs.

I really don’t know if I enjoyed this book or not. It is really interesting and unusual, but filled to the brim with macabre and unpleasant topics including death, police brutality, sexual abuse, murder and suicide. It isn’t a fun read at all – it’s quite harrowing at times – but, considering that the focus is on death, that’s hardly surprising.

The writing style is really what makes this book stand out. It is part prose and part poetry, and excellently written.

Mrs Death Misses Death is a thought provoking read, but very dark and certainly won’t be for everyone. I’m also not sure that it’s a good book for the current climate (Coronavirus and the many deaths associated with that), although it does reference some very up-to-date and current subjects, such as the Grenfell Tower Fire and Black Lives Matter.

This book is so refreshingly unique in every single way. Mrs Death is looking for someone to write her memoirs, and we are taken along on this journey with her as she recounts her entire life's work to writer Wold Willeford.
The way in which this story is written is truly captivating from the start. The storyline flows beautifully, and the messages which are highlighted throughout really do stay with you long after you turn the final page.
I adored this book and would recommend it highly to anyone!.

What if Death wasn't a grim reaper or Hades figure but a woman? A poor, old, black woman?

In Mrs Death Misses Death Salena Godden imagines just that, with Mrs Death telling her memoir to Wolf Willeford, recounting stories, myths and tales from throughout history, blurring fact and fiction, with a dash of fantasy. Godden plays with the reader, offering us snippets and anticipating our reactions in the cleverest of ways, all the time in beautiful poetry. This book has so many layers, you could reread it a hundred times and never get to the bottom of it because it peels back and deconstructs everything we think we know, while laying down a new mythology. Godden looks at so much of our history, incorporating aspects of real life crime, Grenfell and even the Ripper murders into this weaving narrative which constantly ebbs and flows. At times the book is witty and amusing and at others, deeply dark and disturbing, making us all reflect on how we think about and look at death.

Much of the novel does not have a coherent plot or even narrative, with chapters taking different forms and many musings on Life, Time and Mrs Death's relationship with both. While Godden captures specifics of our moment with acute precision, particularly the anxieties of the height of capitalism and the climate crisis, there is a sense of timelessness that pervades the novel, that will likely make it resonate for years to come.

For all its cleverness and layers, it is an utterly readable book, with beautiful writing, and best enjoyed if you simply let it carry you, rather than trying hard to understand it. It will likely be an acquired taste, the style is certainly one for those who savour the unconventional. Mrs Death Misses Death is an inventive and original novel, which defies the form as we know it, but potentially reinvents it at the same time.

Some you win, some you lose and this was more towards the losing side for me. Just not quite my cup of tea.

What I liked was the form and the writing, I mean some of the poems were amazing, but I cannot quite get around the fact that the first 100 pages were amazing and then it somehow changed and it ended up being just ok. And that’s sort of hard to accept when the first part was so great.

This is such an original idea: Mrs Death. Death in this book is a black, working class woman. This turns on its head everything we’ve all grown up believing about Death, and I love this. Why shouldn’t Death be a woman? As it says in the book:
“For surely only she who bears it, she who gave you life, can be she who has the power to take it.”
Seems logical to me.
“And there is no human more invisible, more easily talked over, ignored, betrayed and easy to walk past than a woman; than a poor old black woman.”
The thought of walking past death on a daily basis and not realising that’s who you’re passing, is rather a disconcerting thought!
I liked the playful language, starting with the title and moving on through prose mixed with poetry, and parts were written in script form too. This wasn’t reading for the lazy: it kept me on my toes. The historical deaths seen from Death’s point of view were fascinating too.
I did find myself wishing that Mrs Death had found herself another ghost writer, because Wolf Willeford is clearly a vulnerable person with mental health issues - I did wonder if it was written to illustrate a form of psychosis.
Either way, I loved it and read it FAR too quickly. If this is Salena Godden’s first foray into prose, I will be looking out for what she writes next - and looking out for some of her poetry too, when I can get back in to a library!
Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with an e-copy of this book through NetGalley.

I did very much enjoy Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden which is a wonderfully inventive prose-poem featuring Death as a poor old black woman who is tired of her never-ending work. The book raises really vital questions about the way we live and the way we think about dying and is told with incredible verve and versatility. At some points though, I felt it became a little preachy and some of the poetry wasn’t for me, but overall this is a really fantastic and unique novel. I was also delighted to see a portion of the novel take place in the Curfew Tower at Cushendall which is a mere 10 miles from my house and somewhere we visit regularly!

Wolf Willeford, a writer who is no stranger to death, picks up a magical desk and ends up conversing with the omnipotent Mrs Death. Yes, that death, who has had enough of being forever invisible and wants to talk about her memories with someone.

This is beautifully written, playing not only on words and writing styles (skipping from prose to poetry and songs) but also daring to confront numerous social observations and spin them on their head. What if death, in reality, is really the socially invisible black woman, and what if she actually loves life? It's through Mrs Death that Wolf confronts his grief and sees what is in front of him in a whole new way. There's beauty and acceptance to find in just living, and shaping the world you want around yourself.

It's the rather lyrical way that Mrs Death floats through history that I also found deeply enthralling. We see stories from down the timeline, with real people and places, that add plausibility to the magical aspects of the novel. It's grounding in reality allows the normal supernatural elements to bleed in slowly through the narrative in such a highly skilled way. It's really well done. However, I do think at times the overall storyline suffers due to this jumping around, slowing the pacing particularly through the middle section of the book.

Beautiful story that tackles some touch issues in a deeply magical, highly skilled way. Unique and devastating.

Mrs Death Misses Death is lyrical and beautifully written - you can tell that Godden's previous work has focussed on poetry. The narrative voices really pull you along. There's a comment early on, about the ideal length for a book about such a weighty topic being the time it takes for the train journey from Liverpool to London - although this took me longer than 2 hours 15 minutes to read (as I had to read it in separate chunks around work), it was definitely a quick gulp of a read. I felt drawn through it.
I went into this book with very little idea of what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised - there's a good balance of dark humour and tragedy here. That said, although I enjoyed it a lot, it did feel like there was something missing - I think this may be one of those books that is better on a re-read. This is perhaps because of the creative storytelling method, or because it is such a quick read - things can be missed that might not be in a book which forces you to take your time and savour each detail.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the writer for giving me this ARC of Mrs Death Misses Death.

There is so much to admire in the novel – some of the language and the word play is beautiful and incredibly original. The character of Mrs Death is brilliant – why on earth has death not been characterised this way before? And the snippets of history are glorious. To say nothing of the spectacular title!

The most special thing about this book though it the fact that it perfect captures the zeitgeist of 2020 Great Britain and the world. This book is a dedication to the Black Lives Matter movement, and it is poignant and beautiful for that very reason. This novel explores the tragedy of both Grenfell and George Floyd – puts them front and centre and for that very reason this novel becomes vital. But you have to know about those epic failings of a dangerously discriminatory society to understand the references, making it subtle and (slightly) esoteric.

The concept is simply brilliant: the idea of death being the most ignored of human beings, an old black woman rather than the man dressed in a black cloak with a scythe, and the fact that she ‘misses’ sometimes and allows people to live. The idea of a journalist interviewing the person who collects our souls is genius. And some of the ideas linked with this – the idea that Life and Death are sisters and that Time is their lover is rather lyrical, somehow almost mythical. Sometimes this feels like a myth retold, but because it is not there is even more charm.

The problem is that concept over promises and then completely under delivers. I wonder what this book would have been like with a story! This is a novel that needs a plot and that is what it significantly misses. There is no ending, no resolution. Our suspension of disbelief is not destroyed but is severely disrupted by the end. Often there are elements of self-indulgence and in places, it almost reads as though it was written by a teenager.

Another more serious issue that quite upset me was the use of real people: I don’t like the idea of murder victims and murderer’s actions being used for effect within fiction, I felt that was totally unnecessary as you could easily be inventive here but the use of real victims diminishes them. She alludes to Grenfell and George Floyd very successfully without mentioning them but fails to do so for others.

There is much to admire here but somehow it falls a little short. I personally think it would be an excellent text for A level students to explore the language and how poetic effects are created and can see me using it in a classroom. It was certainly a book that interested me; I adored that it put BLM at the heart of the novel and that, in the end, is what makes it an important piece of work.

This is not a novel - you would think it is from reading the blurb, but actually it is a series of essays, musings, poetry and rants on death, with a couple of stories thrown into the mix. There is a thread which runs through about Wolf, and his / her conversations with death (who is a woman), but there is no real story to it. Apparently Jack the Ripper was also a woman. Interesting, but not coherent enough for me. It feels like a student writing exercises in preparation for maybe writing a novel one day. The author is a poet so that would explain it.

This is a wonderfully creative read. Death isn’t the typical male figure we’ve collectively created, she’s a black working class woman, the person you pass and ignore. This book is a thought experiment in the relationship between Life, Death and Time, their interconnectivity and interdependence. And Death’s subconscious is bound in an antique desk? Amazing!

"I live in the heart of the poor woman, the black woman, the elderly woman, the sick woman, the healer, the teacher, the priestess, the witch, the wife, the mother and the girl. I am Death and I am quick. I am a rabbit and I can vanish. I can be anything I want to be."

Everyone assumes that Death is male, that it's the typical image of the grim reaper. However Death's work is always unseen - because she's an old, black, working-class woman and she's absolutely exhausted. Wolf Willeford is a young troubled writer and despite being orphaned as a child, Wolf hadn't actually met Mrs Death - until now.

On a whim one day, Wolf buys an old desk from a furniture shop and, becoming increasingly fascinated with Mrs Death, begins to write her memoirs. Told through lyrical prose, poetry and conversations between the two, Mrs Death Misses Death traverses through time as Wolf and Mrs Death compare stories and their losses. Containing lots of writing on death (obviously) this novel also explores reflections on class, race, gender, climate change and the future of humanity.

It's hard to review this because I don't feel like my words can do it justice, but I raced through it in two sittings. It's absolutely stunning and the epilogue had me in tears. I have been desperate to read this since I heard about it and it did not disappoint! I can't recommend it enough - go and read it.

Mrs Death Misses Death is an extraordinary read. This novel from poet Salena Godden flits between prose and poetry and results in something beautifully lyrical and unlike anything I've ever read before. Then throw in the premise of this book and the result is a read more unique than anything that I've ever read before,

This novel suggests that death is not the Grim Reaper. If it were to have a gender, it would not be male as perhaps we would assume. Perhaps, as here, Death is a poor black woman.

Mrs Death tells her story through the ironic ghost writing of a human named Wolf. They are diary entries told from both Wolf and Mrs Death's perspective.

This book tackles some pretty big issues - poverty, racism, sexism, climate change and of course death to name a few. It's dealt with such sensitivity and intelligence though.

I don't really know if I enjoyed this book, It's not really that kind of book. But it's exquisitely written, right from the disclaimer at the start which completely sets the tone of what's to come. Abstract and odd is how I'd describe this book, And that's no bad thing.